Mining is a nice get poor slow scheme. Having free electricity is the only way to make money from mining and there is no such thing as free electricity. Those who say they have access to “free” electricity are usually the thieves that use someone else’s electricity.
The competition is too damn hard on mining, having free electricity is the only way to survive. It is smart to avoid participating in a game like that.
I agree the competition is hard, but it's definitely not get poor slow scheme. If you could obtain low electricity rate and newer ASIC at reasonable price, it's still profitable. And there are some business about Bitcoin mining out there.
Having reasonable electricity prices and cheap hardware won’t cut it. You will be competing with the “free” electricity users a.k.a. thieves. It is a loser’s game unless you are also a thief.
People who play honest will never ever make their ROI back unless bitcoin goes super bull and then buying bitcoin makes more sense in the first place. Why risk your hard earned cash on smth where there is a big chance to lose money when you can buy btc and hold and almost certainly make money?
Personally i don't think miner need to worry about that. Those thief also need to obtain either steal any ASIC or buy reasonable cheap ASIC. And as stated by other poster, someone will notice if the thief use lots of electricity.
I will tell you the experience of mining in Russia. In order for you to have a cheap price for electricity, you must buy a contract for at least 1 Megawatt of consumption to get a price of 4-5 cents in the official data center. If you want to officially mine on several dozen ASICs, then you will have a price of 8-10 cents. I'm talking about "white" mining without problems with the law.
“Gray” mining has a price of 2 cents when connected to household networks, but energy workers are actively fighting this.
"Black" mining has a cost of electricity of 0, but with high risks and even a prison sentence.
