Mining in General is unprofitable and will likely not ROI after electricity and the miner is paid for. Even if you get a tax deduction you will simply lose less money but would not cause a profit.
Yes. Yet, most new comers still attract to the mining business.
And the only ones that get more or less constant flow of income are the mining equipment producers. Also, the question is inevitable as to why would they sell mining equipment if they could just mine themselves?
The mining equipment manufactures are mining themselves using the new model machines which are energy efficient, less noisy and tiny. After the new model is launched, then they keep mining with new model and sell out the old model. They grab a lot of profit not only from mining but also from selling mining machine.
This is true, however I consider this to be very unethical. Manufacturers using customer money to build miners and then use the miners for their own profit is very wrong. I think that the customer should receive the bitcoin earned from these machines, less any electricity used.
Regarding ethics, I see no problem here as long as the manufacturers don't change the mining equipment specifications (hash rate before all) and sell used hardware as brand new. If they mine too intensively on the equipment they sell, the difficulty will inevitably grow, and as a result the hash rate of the equipment will not provide enough return, so they won't be able to sell it in the end.
