People will not stop chia unless there is a very long downturn. Chia is mainly high upfront PoW with low upkeep that earns the reward, unlike e.g. GPU mining that also has high PoW but with immediate reward.
Chia is therefore a huge sunk cost operation, with momentous incentives to keep paying he upkeep rather than to bail out.
Very true, low cost of running a farm will mean that less people drop out when the going get tough.
Not sure what reality your livin’ in bro. 
you and @Kwyjibo make terrible prophets, better keep that day job!!
“Crypto Meltdown Turbocharged by Mix of Leverage and Liquidations”
There are some very troublesome figures in this article, caution advised: read while sitting down please…
BTC recovered 25% loss from the bottom relatively fast, perhaps exercise in leverage extension elsewhere, making resultant outlook seem still bleak… It should see 29k in less than 6 trading sessions IMO…
Fridays, almost statistically, happen to be very treacherous - in or out, should be a decision that does not go with you to the weekend, again IMO…
Regulations on their way - they create a massive pump and dump like what happened recently, this is what they inspire…
Not that I wouldn’t agree with reasonable degree of regulation, it’s just that rather than pushing policy, will they try to get the issue at its roots, like China for example, banned all financial derivatives and monetization, will they be able to find some middle ground? Let’s see where all this goes…
It is actually very simple. Chia is long-term investment and actually I see it that way. It doesn’t matter for me if I will farm 10 or 30 chia in the next 3 years - the best way to earn here is to think about long-term rises in price of Chia. The best situation for farmers is to decrease Chia price in this year. Big Chia farmers will not reinvest. We will farm as much as we can and then we could gradually sell it out on some kind of points example: 25% on 5K $, 50% on 10K $ and 25% on 20K $. Looking at that this way we can say, that we have huge passive income every month - and this is what I was looking for.
I wonder if there’s a math that we can put that into, like how much is the cost of hardware purchase, plotters, new hdds for farming, worn out NVMEs, labor and electricity cost when taking into account the price of XCH
Well, I have some kind of calculator, that takes into consideration all of these factors and do some kind of sensitivity analysis (depending on changes in price / netsize / your farm size / your farm plotting speed) and print out the ROI, average time to reach breakeven etc.
This is the way I have calculated:
How I sleep at night? I have limited the scope of my investment to the amount which I can afford to loose without having any hard feelings, and enjoying the process. I think of it as a subscription to play an MMORPG with a potential opportunity to win real dollars…potential to be involved in a revolutionary financial mechanism from which other models and services can be derived. Even if I don’t win, I have a lot of cool hardware that can find other uses along the line as the industry matures into finding better applications. Despite having 0.01% faith in it, I have worked hard and sold myself this plan.
P. S. I also believe in one of the old cliches, it says, If you can’t afford to loose, then you don’t deserve to win.
Sort of like a measure of risk appetite, I think what I should do next is read up on technical analysis of trading, it apparently helps the big fish identify market entry and exit points (simplistically they suggest “era of depression” = market entry, “age of euphoria” = exit!)
P. P. S.
Fallacy of investing big (IMO): Investing big you can get too focused on ROI, pressured into chasing guaranteed payout(a concept relevant and applicable to a job - investment could = 0 payout), and hence taking early exits when you can earn more. Thing is when you have more riding on the line you are more likely to secure the original seed money with a small shave, wouldn’t you be better of buying a mutual fund then? If you invest small, you have less pressure, if you make small timely contributions over longer periods, the multiplier on the investment is paid out as a unit of time, so longer time spent in = larger payout multiplier. Smaller investments are personal, easy to manage. Big investments are generally borrowed or pooled, so have the element of accountability. With what we are doing here, is small independent Enterprise, and should follow a similar well managed investment model rather than a Hard Drive rush…that, I think is a good strategy to win, with the element of luck on your side.
On Luck : A Casino in Vancouver, holding pair of fives, pre-flop raised $35 with one caller, make trips on the flop, rainbow with two pictures, go all in on the flop with $175 to get beat on the river by the caller with an INSIDE straight draw. So yeah, you can pretty much play it almost perfectly and still loose and such is life…
Lol. That was exactly my reasoning. Only difference is I decided to go the “Free to Play” route by just temporarily borrowing idle gear and not investing at all.
I live in the third world, I have to scan through forums and recyclables, markets and scalpers to get the things I need…but then again my terrible decision to dog it out in this heck-hole!
Interesting, I also live in something of a third world, I’ve never bought second hand computer goods before but since chia is mostly cost efficiency as it is increasingly becoming a long term horizon type of venture, I was going to buy a really top notch plotter at first but quickly realized that the long game is constantly having enough budget to add more farms, so second hand goods is beginning to be more attractive, as after I get a decent enough plotter and fill in my drive space, I’ll lease out the plotting capacity to maybe sell plotting services locally, that’s where I think the second hand goods will be handy.
I’ve seen your comments in the forum and it’s mostly a mix of realistic-pessimistic chia worldview as well as inputting your own position as a contributor to this community, you’re one of the people I pay attention to when they write their responses here.
Thanks a lot good man 
couldn’t have said it any better myself, thank you for the detailed response.
I’m now looking into automating the most of the redundant stuff and putting processes for backups and contingencies so that the chia node can run as efficient as possible with the least amount of time invested in it in the long run, so now I’m working hard to make that a reality, in order to be able to make this a side hustle and return back to what I was doing before.
That is the crack what you just suggested IMO…
I will have two full nodes 1 solo with 30% plots 1pooled that I will configure in partnership with a friend with 70% count. He will run another solo of his own with his independent 30%…the plan we are working with to start. Sort of like spreading some chips on the roulette table…
I just got together with a group of friends to start farming and plotting chia together, there’s no pooling involved just sharing of information, kinda like this forum but more realtime.
Pooling is interesting to think about as well, I might be offering some farm shares once my current hdd maxxed out and charge for the operations, plotting, and storage 
gotta make dough when opportunity is presented
There are many derivatives that can be developed - if for example, when the pools come in play, you can get investors with a minimum time commitment, offer them a percentage of your pool farm (more in the beginning), but gradually use the finances to buy more HDDs and increase your pool contributions and thus collect more. Try to be as transparent with associated risk - OFFER IT AS A HIGH RISK INVESTMENT - with greater potential over furthest away payout, early cash-out penalties, and so on… I mean that is the way the model works, and some people develop it into a ponsy scheme. But if you work with honest intentions with a goal to make others a profit, you can become successful in the process…You prepare a team, then you lead that team. In the beginning you will need a functional prototype with predictable payout in order to figure out rate of returns, but that is all in the future…
I will correct you if you want to work this model - you get paid LAST! - You’re the captain of the ship, you get on the ship, you steer the ship, you get it ashore, everyone gets off safely, only then you get to get off, not before, not in the middle, but, in the end…
Jim Rohn said “If you can help enough people get what they want, you can have everything in life that you want!”
Your terrible prophet with real profits quotes XCH price today 665(615 low) - for the sake of sparing the use of prosac, I will refrain from quoting the future 
Want real cash? Buy Gold tomorrow…
Just saying I called it 
You’ve only called half of it. We’ll have to wait ‘for quite some time’ to see if you called it for sure. 
Not saying I disagree with you however… It will probably regain somewhat over the coming months, but as always without a crystal ball, who knows…
It was kind of on the cards IMO - global situation, cost of living ‘crisis’, energy prices, all feeding in to inflation in the global economies as a whole. What do people and companies do ? Offload the risky assets which tanks the prices.
Let’s see what happens next! 