Is mining profitable for anything right now?
I know it used to be a thing a while ago but I guess its just way too competitive too make any worthwhile profit nowadays.
Can anyone shed some light?
If you mine standard coins on video cards with mining calculators and sell at market price, then the payback period at 5 cents per kilowatt will be very long.
ASICs for Bitcoin now look attractive in terms of payback, but for such mining you need special conditions.
There are also highly specialized areas with equipment rental, but here you already need to have good technical knowledge and contacts of tenants.
Cloud mining, there is a lot of fraud there.