It's disheartening to get into bitcoin so late in the game. With ASICs coming out, it's completely unrealistic for anyone to try to get into mining.
Users with over 1k coins, and over 100k coins are the same users that got into the ASIC market when it was first announced.
It's turning out to be just like all other money in the world with the majority of it being controlled by the top few players.
yeah, you're better off investing in buying bitcoins during low valuation periods (man i wish i'd had the funds on hand to buy more when it was $10/btc!), and then leveraging your BTC capital on some exchanges...I've invested maybe $300 since September (i'm definitely a small-time bitcoiner right now), but have parlayed it via both the natural valuation changes and trading SDICE units on Havelock into a portfolio worth around $1300 today...so, what's that, 300% growth in 5 months? not too shabby for a dabbler. Mining is a side-hobby. I don't really have time to game much these days anyway, so I let the system mine and I tweak and jiggle the settings to see if i can squeeze a couple more MHash out of it for my
BTC0.05 every 17-20 hours.