If free electricity is available it's good to keep mining and hold the coins, when market turn greenish you will sell for higher price but make sure you mine the good coins
If there is "free" electricity, you're not mining at a loss...
But, however you look at it, i don't believe in the myth of "free" electricity. Somebody is paying for it, it's just not you (yet). Either your boss, your landlord, your school, your country,... is footing the bill. And if you're not carefull, the costs might end up back with you in the end: you might get fired, your rent might go up, your school might kick you out, your taxes might rise...
But back on topic: there are people who believe that mining while at a net loss is smart because they believe the price of the coin they're mining will rise in the future... This is completely wrong...
Let's make a very simple, fictional example between 2 guys:
On one side you have Bob, he's a miner who continues mining at a loss.
The coin he mines costs him $1000/coin in electricity to mine, but the current market value is only $500. In the course of a month, he mines 10 coins, so there's $10.000 out of his pocket and he has a coin value of $5000. In the next month, the coin value explodes to x10. He now has $50.000 in coin value, and he spent $10.000 to obtain these coins, so his net profit is $40.000.
On the other side, there's Alice. She's the smarter of the two.
When the mining became unprofitable, she turns her miner off. Instead of spending $10.000 in electricity, she just buys $10.000 worth of the coin on an exchange. Since the price is $500 per coin, she buys 20. She has the double amount of coins that Bob has!!!
In the next month, the coin value explodes to x10. She now has $100.000 in coin value, and she spent $10.000 to obtain these coins, so her net profit is $90.000.
In these scenario's, Alice's profit's were MORE than double of Bob's. So if mining becomes unprofitable, but you really believe in the coin you're mining, the smarter thing is to use the money you would have spent on electricity (and even mining gear if you don't expect mining to become profitable again) and buy coins directly.
There are 2 reasons i can think of to continue mining anyways:
- You REALLY believe in the coin, and there's no market to buy these coins, or no liquidity...
- You won't sell the mining gear anyways and you're heating your house with electricity anyways... So why not just run the mining gear and let it convert electricity into heat to make your house nice and warm. Do be carefull: it's not a good idear to buy mining equipment for this purpose!!! A "normal" spaceheater is much cheaper than mining gear, it's safer, it's not as loud.... So if you have to buy mining gear to mine at a loss for the sole purpose of replacing an electric stove, you might end up losing money...
You do have point, what I meant by free electricity is using wind power or solar energy since this is how I've been powering my rigs for over a year now and I've made back my ROI already, I don't believe there is free electricity from grid power too