HAPPY NEW YEAR MINTERS! As an encouragement and reminder to us all, I just did an updated analysis of why Minting > Mining:As some of you may know, years ago, (wow it's been that long), I used to be a bitcoin miner, but I eventually realized how it quickly it became a waste. The only returns you get from mining bitcoin is when the coin gets pumped, so you can sell your coins to recover your mining costs, but then you must re-invest in newer, stronger mining technology, so you can mine more and hope to get your Bitcoin back again. Strangely this pumping cycle seems to be happening over and over again and may be happening now once again. But maybe this analysis I put together for you will help illustrate my point, that in terms of BTC itself, mining for BTC does not actually pay for itself or recover the costs.
Keep in mind, I am not saying my calculations on this are perfect, or that you will get exact results. I used various websites for calculations and did several calculations in my spreadsheet to derive my results. If you want, you should do your own research too to verify my claims, and to check if I did something wrong too. I would like to know if anything can be improved. Also, there are many other 3rd party risks and factors in mining to consider such as pool down-time/efficiency, difficulty changes, global hash-power changes, stale/reject/orphan rates, and luck. Also exchange rates changes. But this analysis is assuming stable exchange rates, difficulty etc.
Mining or Minting? How to Calculate and Compare Potential Investment Return Profitability:
An observation and point to take away from this is, this analysis uses only the price of crypto. MINT to BTC is crypto to crypto only. No fiat money fluctuations are considered here. So on a purely crypto-only level it is a loss to mine for BTC because the cost of mining for it outweighs the final getable return (theoretically this becomes a true statement on all mineable coins after 50% of the total coins are mined). However it a gain to mint for MINT because the cost of minting is nominal. This analysis assumes a stable exchange rate. However, if the price of Bitcoin in fiat money gets pumped up really fast, the exchange rate of MINT/BTC will probably go down, and if BTC gets dumped really hard the exchange rate of MINT/BTC will probably go up. This has happened before in the past if you look on the charts, price fluctuates. But since this is not verily knowable, I assume an exchange rate at the current market price and constant. Bottom line is, it doesn't matter what the fiat money exchange rates are doing, keep in mind this is a crypto-to-crypto comparison. MINT minting vs BTC mining, and in this analysis MINT is the winner all else equal. I haven't tested this against all mining algorithms, but I would expect similar results.
My Conclusion: It doesn't make sense to invest your crypto, in mining for crypto. If you want to invest your crypto in order to gain more crypto, it makes sense to invest your crypto in minting. Maybe this helps some people understand the mining fallacy, and next time you go to invest BTC in Bitcoin mining rigs, consider exchanging it for MINT to invest in Mintcoin minting coins.