Mining is technically the industrial revolution of the computer age

[hokaido]

Wouldn't it be safe to say that since the inception of the computer, it has revolutionized how we interact with each other, including our efficiency, interactivity, and everything in between. However, I believe from a monetary perspective, mining is extremely promising, but does carry a lot of risks for new adopters; but risks that are mitigated in light of the alternatives to investments. Ive noticed that cryptocurrenices offer faster returns that any bank interest to date and surpasses real estate investments as well year to year on average (although the staying power remains to be seen). Even Brick and mortar business run at less profit and are more speculative that Mining, on average and it wouldn't be a stretch to say that the ceiling is extremely far far away, in both the Btc and alt coin sphere; anyone who is now getting into mining should not look at it in comparison to how quickly us early mining adopters received our ROI, but instead review it in light of the alternative "safer investments" out there. It's not a stretch to have your ROI on an alt coin GPU mining rig within 1 year or less, with the inherent value in both the equipment as well as the power it outputs. With new alt coins being created every day, there is room for growth and expansion.

My two cents. Please bump or burn appropriately

[ThE_AdMiRaL]

Mining underlies (basically) the same risk as any other type of investment in my opinion. As Cryptocurrencies are still not approved as payment mehtod by many Countries, there is a large risk of exchange rate fluctuations as we currently see very well when looking at Bitcoin. China says "NO", BTC drops. Starbucks (or any other company for example) says "YES", exchange rate climbs up, altough not with similar impact as if a whole country would accept a coin as a valid currency. High Risk => High Payout/Loss

Industrial revolution? - Maybe. Most Coins are based on Hashing Proof-of-Work algorythms that don't actually generate something thats usefull for other aspects of our everyday life. But there are some coins which have at least the right approach, Primecoin for example. Altough I personally have no real benefit from knowing a Prime number with 300 Million digits, these numbers are at least usefull for Sercurity systems as long as the master pattern for generating prime numbers won't be discovered.

I'm currently mining them too, as they are relatively safe from being overcome by GPUs or ASICs for at least the near future and allow for a stable payout expectation. This has - in my opinion - the additional advantage that I won't have to buy and build my own minign rigs, but that I can rent servers to participate on the calculation process instead.

But there is still a certain risk left, altough said aspects are very unlikely atm.

[hokaido]

You are correct in your assessment, love the insight.

[DakotaW]

Mining underlies (basically) the same risk as any other type of investment in my opinion. As Cryptocurrencies are still not approved as payment mehtod by many Countries, there is a large risk of exchange rate fluctuations as we currently see very well when looking at Bitcoin. China says "NO", BTC drops. Starbucks (or any other company for example) says "YES", exchange rate climbs up, altough not with similar impact as if a whole country would accept a coin as a valid currency. High Risk => High Payout/Loss

Industrial revolution? - Maybe. Most Coins are based on Hashing Proof-of-Work algorythms that don't actually generate something thats usefull for other aspects of our everyday life. But there are some coins which have at least the right approach, Primecoin for example. Altough I personally have no real benefit from knowing a Prime number with 300 Million digits, these numbers are at least usefull for Sercurity systems as long as the master pattern for generating prime numbers won't be discovered.

I'm currently mining them too, as they are relatively safe from being overcome by GPUs or ASICs for at least the near future and allow for a stable payout expectation. This has - in my opinion - the additional advantage that I won't have to buy and build my own minign rigs, but that I can rent servers to participate on the calculation process instead.

But there is still a certain risk left, altough said aspects are very unlikely atm.

I think you have it right. I think of it almost as the stock market. It has it's ups and downs, but in the long run it can either be very profitable. I think if you are just mining then the potential of loss is very small, maybe a higher electricity bill. Currently I just started mining digibyte after trying primecoin. My CPU just want enough to keep up. Digibyte is very new so the dificulty is still pretty low. Im not sure what the conversion rate is, but I have heard that it is supposed to be 1/1000th of bit coin. Right now that would be around 80 cents a coin. So if I mine a thousand coins (very easy) eventually that will be 800$. Now i am not expecting it to be anywhere that price. But you have to admit it is much nicer to have 1,000 coins in your wallet than .000000002.

[overture]

ROI on GPU mining is way less than a year at present. Maybe like 3 months.

[CryptoReaper]

I do think this is similar to the industrial age, i'd go as far to say that we are still in the beginning of a revolution. A global economic revolution.