what econ class did you take? that's not ROI that's simply getting your money, back, breaking even.
Breaking even means 100% ROI, no? Enlighten me.
depends on who's telling it. Normally yes, though some would call 100 percent ROI a doubling of your investment.
The term itself merely means that you get an income from your investment.
Logic dictates that any ROI less than 1 % is essentially taking a loss (even on the investment of your time into evaluating wether the investment is worthwhile or not) Some would disagree with me that the sweat equity from learning and refining your research would be a sort of intrinsic return as you've gained general knowledge.
Logic and finance don't seem to have much in common. Cynicism aside, I agree with that argument, as education is impossible to calculate.
However, the reason ROI calculation involves both the negative and positive side of the equation is because of time preference. ROI is usually calculated using a time factor, and that is what's scaring people right now. They see their machines becoming unprofitable (no continuing ROI) due to electrical costs. I think there are ways around this. No, I know there are ways around this, and they have multiple vectors.
That, and I have a fairly long time frame in mind. I am betting on the long term viability of bitcoin, rather than the short term viability of mining machines.
disclaimer, even though previously stated, I do NOT currently have any skin in the game other than time and learning. Wasn't for lack of trying, though. If I could have raised the money in time, I would have gone with a first day pre-order for KNC. Now I'm in the "watch and wait" category. I still think that long term, mining is a good investment for a number of reasons. The main one is that I believe bitcoin is still very young, and very undervalued. But to make it rise, there needs to be a lot more development towards mainstream adoption. And for that to work well, there need to be a lot of miners keeping the network large enough to prevent somebody from hijacking the blockchain. Which brings it full circle to mining being a good LONG TERM investment, with some ugly short term hurdles.