Having just ordered parts for my first mining rig, I'm in the process of doing research into mining as a long-term career option. Myself and a friend have a business plan for scaling up, so we're using this first rig as a "proof of concept".
After 6-12 months, once this rig is paid off, we have an additional $10-20k to scale up, with a view of putting in about the same again after 2 years. We've spent a lot of time examining both the forecasts and predictions of cryptocurrency markets, hardware trends, overheads and profitability, and at face value, it looks possible.
However, the cryptocurrency industry changes daily. While we have a lot of optimism for our little endeavor, we want to keep our expectations realistic.
So I ask the question, can cryptocurrency mining be a realistic, full time, long term career?