Well, as you might've noticed I happen to be a minnow, and I am by my very nature competitive. If I had any cash to spare I would Steem Power without a second's delay, just so I could boost my standing on here further. Unfortunately, lack of cash is what drove me here to begin with, and more and more of my efforts are driven toward Steemit investment, because the mining route, as you state here yourself, is becoming a dead-end. The only really cost effective way to mine is to drop a huge sum of money into several Antminer S7s, chain them all together, and then let them do their thing. If people actually had that kinda money to spare, that is. I tried mining with my Dual Core CPU first (you can laugh at that, cause I did too).
Then I tried mining on a four year old low-profile Galaxy GTX 750 Ti.
Then it hit me...this sh*t just ain't gonna work. Gotta find another way.
Leaves those of us who didn't wishing we had invested heavily in Bitcoin way back in the day.