The tales of lowly farmers unable to escape poverty are abound and endless for ages.
They toil and sweat on their farms only to have the price of their harvests go down and forced to sell at low price before their buyers, mostly rich speculators, stock the harvest and wait to release it when the price is up.
This suppose to be reduced by the blockchain revolution. But alas, it seems it's still not realized fully.
The same problems actually exist in the blockchain world. The ones who profits more are the one who are able to accumulate any particular coins and sell when the price fits their tastes. Small time, decentralized miners are mostly forced to sell their weekly rewards for profits. So far the profits are there.
But what would happen if profits are almost non existent for them?
They will still be forced to sell their coins at whatever the price is at the market, and just swallow the small profits that will make their ROI longer.
And since the price of many of alt-coins are so tied to BTC, when BTC falls, all miners stare at the looming dark days ahead, keep turning on their machines on the hopes that one day the price increases while still selling their small sized bag of coins weekly.
It is good that many of the small time miners are doing if only as a "hobby" then. They still have their main incomes, still have some other source of wealth, and already accumulating some of those wealth themselves. For them, the best course of actions is to actually accumulate the coins to be profit of them later if they can. Just pay the electricity cost.
We in blockchain world believes that the current value of the market is still far from the highest potentials, so we should just try to accumulate the coins and pay the electricity cost only.
If you're actually digging your heels deep into cryptocurrency minings and abandon all else, then you must prepare to be totally smart about it, because your livelihood is still at the mercy of big money speculations, pumps and dumps scheme, and rampant hacking. Not to mention constant monitoring of everything that is running, especially GPUs. A stray static shock is not good for you.
Digging deep into cryptocurrency mining for now is living like the frontiersmen, carving their place in the wild west. The difference is now you're dealing with unseen threats, and actually have the abilities to gather information much much faster.
You're standing on a hill of information age, looking into the open, rolling plains of data and chatters, and hoping you can go further than you are now, staking claims and working proofs.
Dig deep if you want to, but be wary of the bitconnect and USItech of the world. May our hashrates be high and our temps be low.