With the hangover from ETH still holding down the market, most of the people I know who were GPU mining during the last bubble in 2021 have given up mining. Even those in areas with insanely cheap power that could still be mining profitably are no longer interested and don't see it as their opportunity to easily get rich anymore. This fatigue is usually when I see the market changing. I will admit I've also shut down my miners that were barely profitable due to heat in the summer not making it worth the cooling effort. In my experience, times like now when mining seems like a lost cause is when it's the most profitable looking back.
Mining on new video cards now resembles a useless use of a valuable resource, and miners turn them off from mining. Old video cards give little profit and such mining is used to accumulate coins, but 10-20 cents a day for each video card seems like a small investment.It may seem so but 8 video cards for 1.60 dollars daily now when translated in crypto rewards is not that little,especially if people are firm believers that crypto will reach soon another new all time high.It is very much worth it if these people mine ETC for 1 month,ETHW for another,then jump and use unmineable pool to be paid in any currency they wish for by doing the mining in their favorite currency i.e mining ETHASH algorithm and getting paid in SHIBA INU or other low value tokens like FUN token,so tons of options to put the cards to good use for the people who know what they want to achieve.
As far as I know Nicehash is still available and a couple of other pools who offer payouts in Bitcoin and even though 1.60 dollars daily maybe little in Bitcoin,if you keep doing it day by day you can collect a very nice amount until the next bull run which many are expecting in Q4 2025 and by doing so they also remove the risk of the coins they mine that they may go away,Bitcoin is sure to not go away as the absolute king of cryptocurrencies and it is always a nice idea to try and collect as much as we can.
Mining the right shitcoin can reduce the payback period to 100-200 days, or it can make mining in vain.
I like option 2.
While I can agree with you I surely don't like making my efforts of mining shitcoins go in vain as most likely they will be going in vain if I continue with them,I personally prefer that 660 day payback and in fact I don't think at all about the payback but just the amount,substantial profit amount that I will make during the next bull run.
If Bitcoin price goes to 100.000 dollars I would be very happy back then and I would not mind if I mined at a loss in that day,in the end though everyone has his own strategy and I hope everyone of us make a nice profit when the time comes.
Therefore, I mine those coins that I don't really like
But it's like a game of guessing the right coin. 
