The easy money is gone ladies and gents (probably mostly gents)
With the calculators on sites like (https://www.cryptocompare.com)and (https://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency) you can easily estimate how much you could potentially make or lose trying to mine.
So if you're considering getting into mining this just about summarizes what you need to know.
Costs = Hardware + Electricity.
Hardware: Most miners that will produce anything even remotely worth your time are going to set you back a couple thousand dollars.
Once you embark on your Journey of joining a pool and mining, with the end goal of accumulating some digital currency, let’s do a brief cost/benefit analysis.
Electricity: Unless you live in China where electricity is superbly cheap (.04 cents per KWH) you’re going to spend anywhere from 2-4 thousand dollars on electricity (if you’re in the US).
Let’s image 2 scenarios, I buy an S9 Antminer in NYC and you buy one in Shanghai. Keep in mind these thing is going set us back roughly $2000 plus another $200 for a power supply.
Profit?: According to cryptocompare.com’s calculator you would make roughly $2979.14 minus the cost the S9, would net you $400-500 in one year. Year 2 you could make some nice loot!
I would lose roughly lose $400 minus cost of the s9, means I’m losing almost 3k for participating.
Best case scenario: If you have cheap or free electricity your hardware is flawless, your internet never goes down, AND the price of bitcoin goes up or remains the same then you can stack some cash after year 2.
Risks to consider: The value of coins could drop, increasing difficulties will lessen your profit, your s9 could break, the power could go out, your internet could go down.
That is all. I hope this doesn’t sound too pessimistic, I'd just like to be helpful. If my assumptions here are wrong please let me know.
Cheers!
Balt