I think that people really overstate expenses and understate earnings potential when talking about mining not being profitable
They never take into account these things
#1 not everyone pays as much for power as they do. You pay .25 a kwh for electric, that sucks. A lot of US citizens pay .04 to .08c a kwh
#2 Money spent on equipment isn't "thrown out the window", but instead its a tangible asset that can be resold. Its resell value must be deducted from your initial cost analysis, and deducted from how much you have to make to "break even"
#3 They dont take into consideration "scale". Is buying one video card going to let you retire? No absolutely not. Will 1000? Yeah probably.
#4 They assume the bitcoin market is stagnant to inflationary, meaning the bitcoin will stay the same or go down. This is not a fact. Its not false, but its also not a fact. If u really know where the bitcoins going, then quit with bitcoins and work the stock market with your same magic, because you have a crystal ball the devil gave u when he was clearing out his garage. Wish i did.
#1, the power is only about 10% of the cost right now, so that isn't very important.
#2, I assume you can sell for about half the new cost. Maybe that is too pessimistic.
#3, Scale doesn't matter when talking about profitability, only percent growth matters. You can just multiply your scalar by the growth factor. I am saying that the growth is negative. In which case, a larger scale just means bigger losses.
#4, If bitcoins go up, you will get a better return on just buying them and taking the gain. Ironically, if bitcoins go way down, miner hardware is a better investment because at least you have some hardware you can sell on ebay.