You have got to be more specific on which coin you are talking about. Also your location plays a huge part too. To mine means to have a capital to purchase a rig powerful enough to mine and then sustain it using electricity. Knowing that you will incur a 'loss' with no guaranteed returns, is it then worthwhile to mine??
HOWEVER, there are people who have mined bitcoin when it's worth less than a dollar and if they are still HODL to it, they are likely to be in the meme lambo club now.
Do your own research, find out the electric bills involve. If it all fails, you can always HODOR.. I mean HODL! Cheers (:
Sure, I agree I should be more specific.
I guess I mean if we're thinking about investing 3000-6000USD, and electricity is a profitable figure, (.1-.15usd/kWh). That's my situation--I had around 6000 to invest and i went half into hodling a coin portfolio and half into a 6 card gpu mining rig. This way I can build value in the more traditional I minable coins like BTC, LTC, etc and also build relatively consistent growth in a bunch more.
Diversified growth caps potential gains for sure, but it definitely can give more sustained returns.