I jumped into mining with a purchase of a $15 AntMiner USB chip. I'm not and never had any belief I'd make much of a profit on it, it was mostly for learning. But I'm wondering if it's even possible to make any profit.
I'm currently getting 1.75 GHash/Sec. From what I have received over the past few hours, as well as projects from various web sites, the lifetime earnings of this will be about $5. That's earnings, not profit. Cost+shipping will be about a $25 loss). That's assuming BTC price remains stable, I'm not using any electricity, and a few other factors in favor of some kind of a profit.
If that projection is accurate, than if I were to get a 1 THash unit at about $2,100 then I might expect a lifetime earnings of $2,800 or so. Again, assuming BTC price is stable and not factoring in expenses like electricity, time spent working with the unit, etc.
Is this about right? Has mining become such a commodity right now that you might hope to recoup only a few percentage profit over time on a capital investment?
Short answer is yup...welcome to the world of mining. Cloud mining seems to be where it's at right now and even most of those major operations are in trouble. Basically only people designing/producing asics are making any real money in that space. You don't really mine for profit anymore.