If you look at the forecast for Envion, the revenue production far outweighs the expense.
Mining is very profitable. The thing about capitalism and supply and demand is that this gap is closed, in time. Unless there are barriers to entry such as patents that prevent this. This is looking down the road, at when the gap is closing - when that happens it will be about who can minimize their expenses to keep that margin. For now, all miner are gold. We don't know how long that will last, but I think its safe to say that there is a hefty profit that will still be there in 12 months. With increase in crypto value comes an increase in miners which causes an increase in the difficulty, which brings down the profitability of mining. It is this fine balance that we will carry into the future and will determine who makes money and for how long. Envion's business plan is to stay flexible and have ingenuity in their approach. They are funding this with an ICO to speed up the process and be first to market. The are looking to secure contracts that are win-win and will stay in place and hopefully grow over the next while. These contracts will lower the expense to a much lower amount than your typical mining farm and i believe this will allow Envion to remain in the mining game, perhaps above other typical mining farms. They are working on scenarios where companies pay THEM to mine in order to heat their facilities... with the narrowing of the gap though, profits decrease and other miners that cant compete will go offline, which increases profits, and such is the delicate balance. But for the near future, there is profit for everyone, and their speed will help them in growing an in returning our investment in a relatively short period of time. Its in Envion's hands now to execute. I'm pumped for it!
What happens when things start majorly shifting from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake (e.g. Tangle/ HashGraph) making mining irrelevant?
You say when as if its a fact. From what I know, to make cryptocurrency work, the Proof must be difficult to solve, but easy to check. Proof of work does that very well, Proof of stake not so much. And that causes issues with keeping it decentralized. But I dont know what the distant future really holds. Also Tangle is proof of work still, its just built into the transaction when you send, as opposed to separate. I think blockchain is just in the beginning stages and will be around for a while. But who can really predict the future and innovation. I'm just betting on POW for the next 2 or 3 years. I also invest in IoTa.