Mining vs Buy & Hold

[jdndndndx]

At current prices, are there any alt-coins that are worth mining, instead of just buying them from an exchange? I am curious about Scrypt, SHA256, or CPU-only coins.

Is mining a speculative investment? I am new, so this is not fully obvious to me.

[CoinMakr]

Its hard to say long term. I built my miners not just for the coins, but for the fun of it too. I love computers. When coins are launched, they are not on an exchange so its hard to buy unless you can find private sales. So mining gives you a head start. Mining is also how transactions are confirmed so they are crucial to the whole thing, if you believe in the concept, build a rig and contribute some hashes. If it all goes to sht, you can always build a gaming rig from it all or sell it off at maybe 50% of what you paid.

[jdndndndx]

Its hard to say long term. I built my miners not just for the coins, but for the fun of it too. I love computers. When coins are launched, they are not on an exchange so its hard to buy unless you can find private sales. So mining gives you a head start. Mining is also how transactions are confirmed so they are crucial to the whole thing, if you believe in the concept, build a rig and contribute some hashes. If it all goes to sht, you can always build a gaming rig from it all or sell it off at maybe 50% of what you paid.

I guess that means you should mine several coins as a hedge against risk.

[unkn0wnPlayer]

I do both. I've purchased LTC, FTC, and QRK.

I have a hash rate between 500 - 900 khash/s so I tend to mine smaller alts as they appear, and trade a portion of them on the exchange for more BTC & LTC while holding the rest.

It's a slow process but can be fun. Sometimes it really pays off (Dogecoin and RonPaulCoin) while other times it doesn't (Fedoracoin and Mooncoin).