Well, it depends on personal insight. For those looking for unbelievable good ROI in no time (I mean those still living in 2013) I wouldn't say it's a good investment. But there's ponzi like companies out there for those willing to take the risk for quick profit.
Long term I'd say it's a good thing. Bitcoin is far from being dead, there's more possibilities every day, and the difficulty growth is slowing. Hardware manufacturers should be careful about what they do as history has proven that mindlessly adding massive amounts of power can be disastrous for both difficulty and coin value and leads to dropping sales. Which means the arms race will probably move towards efficiency. Building 250W 0.8THs miners instead of 1200W 2.5THs versions. I'm sure they will sell more of those efficient machines then of the biggies, so the investment for the manufacturer is a lot less risky. There is a market for big ass miners, but the number of customers capable of buying, running and maintaining those is a lot smaller. If only one or two of those big customers don't buy a load then the impact on sales is quite big already.
So, I'm with Marco Streng when he said you better be mining already for when Bitcoin goes up, because the demand for hashrate at such times will spike. If you have to buy in at that point it will be costly. So, long term thinking, I keep expanding my hashrate slowly. Yes, the value of the mined coins may be less, despite adding hashrate, but hey, that's short term thinking again.
Let's see where this leads to 6 months from now, or 12 months, or 24. Might end up at the bottom, but that's where I came from originally, so can't get worse. Lots to gain, nothing to lose
Oh, to those mining UNO (yes, me included), buckle up
Very good insights
Lower profitability from mining was inevitable, because whenever excessive profits occur, they seldom exist forever
In this case, excessive profit lastest for 14 months, before those 14 months there was 46 months of low profits mining Bitcoins.
Bitcoin supports 99% of SHA256 miners, it is an Economic Coin, when SHA256 miners choose to save/reserve their mined Bitcoin the price will skyrocket
Litecoin supports 95% of Scrypt miners, it is an Economic Coin, when Scrypt miners choose to save/reserve their mined Litecoins the price will skyrocket
Darkcoins support 60% of GPU miners, it is an Economic Coin, when GPU miners choose to save/reserve their mined Darkcoins the price will skyrocket
Therefore, the reality of the situation that we are all trying to accurately explain is the relationships between Fiat Currency and our new sector of crypto currencies when a a major crypto currency transitions from being an hobbyist item (toy) into something that is useful to the masses. An Economic Coin is supported by more then 50% of miners on that algorithm indexed to mining equipment, essentially it is an economic democracy were miners have concluded the safest location for their investments and profits are in a particular currency utilizing a particular type of hardware or and algorithm. THIS IS WHAT NON-MINER INVESTORS WANT TO KNOW AND WHETHER THIS CRYPTO CURRENCY IS UNDERVALUED OR OVERVALUED.
More then one Economic Coin is needed, to prevent overvaluations causing losses to newbie investors, ultimately crypto currencies will need 6-12 POW crypto currencies to eliminate losses for Newbie investors
Developing answers to these types of questions is essentially to the progression of crypto currency sector:
How should the macro economic equations be written?
What is an acceptable long term profit margin from mining?
How should the network difficulty be used to affect the price of mined coins?
For Bitcoin and Litecoin and Darkcoin; they are at beginning of their economic existence