People always said that buying is better than mining (and they have been right almost all of the time), but where's the fun in just buying?
When you're an ex-miner, recognize how unprofitable and a pain in the balls it is to run a mining operation, end up doing the math on a miner + electricity + Time to ROI... fuck the fun.
Time is money. Cheaper to buy what you would spend on a miner now, than what it would likely generate 18 months from now, IMO.
Unless you have cheap or free electricity, I don't see the benefit of mining right now vs just buying corn outright.
Remember back in the older days it was a pain to buy coin. Even now there is a pretty big markup at the local ATMs so that sucks.
And if you were a miner that "mined at a loss" back in the day and held you probably have "made so much of a fuckton above your ROI that you're snorting coke off a hooker's ass". Sometimes it's what you think the thing is worth as opposed to what it may be worth now.
And you're helping to secure the network and keep it from being a 100% Chinese dumpster. That has value.