The entire crypto space is constantly expanding at insane rates as solution after solution keep popping up for current industries. Crypto coins have surfaced to mainstream media as a security in which speculative investors can attempt to play Finance while hopping in and out of volatile markets. Just with speculative investing, billions of dollars a year are being pumped into the crypto space allowing for teams after teams of devs to invent ideas and run with the token/coin to create funds. In some cases this can be purely a scam, where the dev team has no intentions of attempting to peruse a real product but in other cases, the teams profit off token/coin sales goes towards their projects continuation towards success.
In order to get their projects off the ground, many coins/dev teams have sourced to user mining to incentivize computer space/computing power from consumers to do various objectives in order to support the network being mined. Consumers who want to get involved with mining in general are responsible for the confirmations of transactions, and the development of new blocks through hashing algorithms. Online forums and other sources would lead the average investor away from a “high risk” venture. But in reality mining is the correct way to invest in crypto. Ever wondered how those whales of new coins accumulate coins? Not to say that every whale is a miner, but if a mining consumer directed his miner towards a highly profitable coin that then turned into something even bigger, the miners bag of coins would then be worth even more. In this strange time period graphics cards are holding their prices very well and will be able to be resold if the farmer decides to get rid of his tools.
Mining enables the consumer to direct their hardware towards their coin of choice and begin being compensated for their dedication of computing power. Some would say that offering ones miner for another's coin is the highest way of support for the coin, as you are become part of the process of supporting the network. Often kWh and high electricity costs scare many away when this is usually incorrect information or FUD from misinformed potential investors. In reality kWh costs can reach expensive numbers if the miner is located in an area that has expensive electricity but in the US you will typically find electricity anywhere from a ballpark of .15 kWh to .05 kWh which is relatively cheap considering potential profits. A website like https://whattomine.com/ (other websites can be used too) can be used to calculate your electricity costs into projected revenue for your mining devices. Obviously the higher your electricity cost, the higher the cost of operation and visa versa.
Mining forums or subreddits can help newcomers to an extent, but I doubt that you will find a lot of help as troubleshooting is up to you to figure out if your device malfunctions or lack of enthusiasm from more experienced users to answer the same questions over and over again.
As governments begin to get more involved and regulations / laws begin to get pumped out there will be changes to the market, but for the time being the best way to get into crypto would be to get your hands on ASICs or Graphics Cards and start mining and start paying taxes on your earnings because if you are tech savvy in the slightest you will likely be profitable in this industry.
I am not financial advisor and this is only my opinion about cryptocurrencies. If you want to invest you should do your own research.
TL:DR
- Crypto is growing
- Mining supports networks of coins
- Profitable Now w/potential to be even more profitable in the future with growth of crypto
- FUD about high kWh costs cleared