Hello all,

So I'm reading up all I can about BTC. I looked into mining a while back before ASICS started shipping and got a little sticker shock so I walked away. After the US gov decided to leave BTC alone, I'm thinking it might be a good idea again. However...I need a little sanity check on what I've read/concluded:

My understanding is that profitability for CPU/GPU mining is little to none. Mainly due to block difficulty vs. costs of your rig/electricity rates (though mine are pretty good at $0.053 per KWh). Even if you manage to mine some BTC and hope for the value to increase over time to net you some profit, the difficulty increases make it that much harder to mine further while your costs continue. So your only hope is to mine while your hardware can handle the calculations and then stop altogether while waiting for BTC valuation to go up - then sell.

From my reading, this process seems to ring true for ASICS as well. I have run several scenarios using the mining dashboard on genesis block and in almost every case I would only have 4-6 months of profitability under the assumption that the hardware arrives immediately. In most cases I have found that companies are shipping the next batch of products in March, making profitability for miners very low if there's any at all. I've also looked at some of the price vs. difficulty charts on these forums - meaning not only that profit has to be made within 6 months but getting the most out of your hardware will require a combination of mining vs. buying at the right moments where pricing is high compared to difficulty or vice versa.

In any case, is all the above accurate? If so, how can a budget conscious miner make any money? It seems that not only do I have to drop at least a few grand USD for decent hardware but also find a shop that will ship it immediately if I'm to make any money at all. Is my only chance for making money in buying/selling BTC or mining alt-coins?

Thanks in advance for your answers.