Its been like this many times in the past. People use all kinds of weird logic and math to come up with awesome profit scenario's to justify mining. Mining rigs fly off the proverbial shelf with manufacture's getting interest free loans from investomers! Most newbs don't understand a basic fact about Bitcoin POW mining. Mining was designed as a "near" zero sum game and the network is constantly making its way towards that goal.
Another often over looked perspective is that mining can be looked at as a bet AGAINST diff increase. Based on available data this doesn't like a good bet to me right now! I think a lot of people will find this out over the coming months!
That's exactly what I'm trying to explain here and the numbers show this so very clearly. Only in the most optimistic scenarios will your miners make some money for some time.
For those who have S9's on hand now, new, used or coming soon, sell'em now!!!
You will make a massive profit given the prices they sell for on Ebay right now.
Your miner will never make that kind of money, the numbers are just not in your favor no matter how you put it.
But, wait a month or 2 and they will be worth peanuts and your miner will be making little or no money at all.
Again, It's really NOT about the bitcoin price, it's about the growing network hashrate and given Bitmain has been dumping S9's like there is no tomorrow in the last month or two, the most pessimistic line on the graph above might well not be pessimistic enough.
I made this chart a little while ago when I was deciding whether or not to sell my S9 miner (which I did at a massive profit), and looking at what the network hashrate has actually done since then:
https://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/hashrate/6m?c=m&g=15&t=a,
It appears to be tracking well above the middle line towards the pessimistic line.
I had it at 14.9E at Jan 1st, it was actually 15.4E, and it's at 16.6E now!