It scales. 1 gpu is still profitable because electric is less than 50 gpus. Profit is smaller naturally though.
Yes about 41$ a month or 510,77$ a year assuming that you are mining 24/24 7/7 with a dedicated rig around a 1060. You get the money back in 5- 6 months
IF ETH is staying in the same condition.
That's a gamble to make, and i can see a few people who would rather mine on ilde time with the main computer, rather than make a bet and spend money on another rig, and pray that things won't go "kaput" before they can make profits. Students aren't really the type to have piece of mind about a "little" 300$/€ gamble, I could actually use a second 1060 to make rendering more bearable, without having my computer freezing with that money.
ASIC machines can not run certain math algorithms to mine, and ETH can only be run on GPUs. And why not learn about mining instead of complaining about "the elites" blah blah blah.
I've read a few things about cryptocurrency, the concept itself it interesting, but they also pointed out that the overal direct influence on the world is currently quite small (while causing not so negligable issue, like the huge global power draw,) . And I really feel like that most people are just in it for the money, rather than all the applications ETH is supporting, or the "groundbreaking future" that it could bring. Anything related to cryptocurrency is still far from being really mainstream, lot of people are living just fine without getting involved with it, so having people seeing it as just "greed", "easy money", or an hindrance is easy. That's just like people having no education in art seeing it as a lazy jobs, not something worth making a living off, or just plain useless (and the wolrd of art itself got some ugly side).
My reply was mainly because you ( and also some other peoples elsewhere) are poking people with the low income argument, those guys are talking of mining as something meant for those with a big wallet, and that's just too bad if you can't afford it. Some of those people may be students, or freelancers, and can use the power of a gpu for other stuff than gaming, and for those peoples great performance at a great value is a really great thing to have. Seeing how the current "introduction" of mining gpu had zero effect on the avaibility of gaming gpu it's easy to get worried.
My problem isn't with cryptocurrency itself, but rather the way it's cannibalizing another market, and all the shitstorm that's happening after. I've said in other post that if mining is becoming more than just a trend, the market need to adapt to avoid this kind of situation were a 279$ RX 570 is presented as a good deal.