Mining no doubt is profitable, but anyone interested in mining is better off procuring his/her own equipment and managing their mines themselves, once bitten, twice shy!
In my case, I am more interested in investing in facilities - the difference is between running a casino and gambling yourself, but I want to run a fair and clean one.
Comparison to the casino is very interesting.. To be honest with you, investing in your project is a bit like gambling. It can be true and succeed, but also it can end up with big crash.
Well, I didn't mean to use the word to connote anything negative. There are professional gamblers who think they have a better chance than others - visionary, great politicians all see things others don't and there are people for whom the vicissitude of life is a reward in itself. Who are us to tell them that they are wrong!
And mining has its utility and everyone has the miners to thank for having the stable and growing prices - miners are real stakeholders and provide significant resistance that prob have prevented prices from collapsing many times.
For me, a big part of my motivation is to preserve people from those securitized cloudmining ponzis and give them greater control over their assets - not the kind of control that you would get mining in your own basement, but greater than buying those worthless contracts.
And speaking from experience, I can attest that I have met more large miners who have made money than those have lost - so statistically, it is more likely a money-making gamble than a losing one.
Actually I should correct myself - I do run 25 S9s so I am sort of gambler myself, one that admires and thinks that he excises self-control but a gambler nevertheless.