Hoggle
I think the biggest thing to consider is the long term. When people mined in the 1080’s they saw the huge profit potential and bought into it expecting that they would make money but then the crash happened and a lot of them didn’t see themselves even paying off what they put into the mining rig. That is probably also what is happening now. People are trying to justify buying a scalped card thinking it will pay for itself but the reality is you are guessing what the crypto market will be like in five or six months if not far longer then that.

 Exactly this.  People are late to the party, hoping to make some late $.  I mean I might be wrong but I wouldn't be too confident.

Might be on the wrong site for this man 

mining might put extra mileage on your system.

last I saw with Ethereum anyway on a 3080 it was something like 2,000 dollars a year so at current scalper prices its really not worth it imo, plus no reason to encourage scalping no matter the profits you could end up making. It's a very volatile thing mining so unless you are using a ton of cards you have no idea if profits would even stay high enough to mine for a year.

Profit changes daily and so does all crypto value.

It's profitable just depending on how long you can make a break even.

I hate scalpers, don't buy graphics cards from them

garbage-79
I am absolutely confident that crypto is here to stay. Even with the crazy spikes in high and low you don't loose crypto but it's only the evaluation to the USD. And don't forget, you might be used to the dollar and think it is of value but in the end it's only a piece of paper issued by the government. It was manipulated in the past, is currently under manipulation and will be further manipulated in the future for sure. Think of crypto more as digital gold. Gold has a very value for usage as well in the everyday live but it is something the government cannot clone or manipulate as they want. Crypto is here to stay. 

Your absolute confidence is worth the world to me. But this is based on...what, exactly? Your gut feeling? 

I read through this thread to see if this thread just turned into a big fight haha... There's a lot of tension between gamers and miners I think! Might turn into world war 3090.

I have thought about this but mining is bad for the environment so I don't want to have to mine to recoup the costs from buying from a scalper.

Given the crash of crypto and expense of trying to get a card now, I wouldn't bother.

mining is still profitable atm, but the question becomes is how profitable can it be for you? there are several factor to consider, and what if your rig burns down, what then?

garbage-79
I am absolutely confident that crypto is here to stay. Even with the crazy spikes in high and low you don't loose crypto but it's only the evaluation to the USD. And don't forget, you might be used to the dollar and think it is of value but in the end it's only a piece of paper issued by the government. It was manipulated in the past, is currently under manipulation and will be further manipulated in the future for sure. Think of crypto more as digital gold. Gold has a very value for usage as well in the everyday live but it is something the government cannot clone or manipulate as they want. Crypto is here to stay. 

Well, the government ripped back the ransom paid ($3M) during a recent cyber attack.  So it's not invulnerable now.

It became a low hash rate, but is it not so much affected?