Another alternative I mention all the time to those with high electrical costs and noise restrictions is to get your miners hosted. If you're sending them off to a colocation that is trusted, there's relatively little risk involved, and it comes with all the benefits of home mining minus noise (and most colocations have very reasonable electrical rates, though there are maintenance fees in some areas).
It's not even worth the hassle. You at that point depend on your hardware to remain functional, and the location where the miners are hosted to not mess up, and then we have the regulations playing a role of importannce; there are too many negative variables involved that should function as a mining no-go. All these external investments are a waste of time and don't yield anything worthwile.
$10,000 investment in mining will probably take you years to break-even with how the difficulty keeps going up, which is just insane.
$10,000 investment in Bitcoin allows you to actually benefit from its massive potential.
By the time you managed to break-even with your mining investment, Bitcoin itself has likely made a x3-x5 jump. It's like people choose to use a bike to circle the globe, while they could use a Ferrari to get the same thing done in a much faster and profitable way. Smart money makes money. Putting it into mining isn't smart for the average person.
