Some crazy bastards i know have ONLY mined ETH from day one with their Nvidia cards. Years now
i have a buddy i just saw last week that does that, such is his choice.
Its arguable that if he held to a nice ATH then sold, he definitely made a killer profit. And didnt have to jump around like us "active" miners
As his rig has also been hands free for years now, he literally forgets its in his basement for months on end
(its so covered in dust idk how it even runs anymore lol, you cant even tell what cards are in it (their EVGA1070's))
@OP. i agree with Adaseb, i wouldnt worry too much right NOW as ETH tends to never make deadlines
Mining is centralized mostly now between low power cost locations, and FPGAs
Once ETH goes PoS, the 3 million(?) cards needing something else to mine will Tsunami all PoW coins, ETC included
willl this crush them?or pump some of them? only time will tell!
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/difficulty-eth-etc.html
Eth deactivated the difficulty bomb