From my own experience, and I’m a mong one of the early adopter of Bitcoin mining. Short answer are: mining – no, masternodes – maybe, invest – maybe.
Mining cryptocurrencies is no longer profitable, due to the fact the value of all the coins had fallen deeply to all time high (ATH) even if you think that one day it will pick up and you will gain the profit, but how are you going to pay for your electricity and mining equipments – and credit card is not the answer. You may think that well I have money now and I will invest in mining, and within 2-3 years the value of all cryptos coins will go up in value and I will sell them, but what if it doesn’t go up in 3-5 years? – yeah you will be in big depts no different than gambling double down with finger cross but in the mining case you put more effort and working harder.
Masternodes isn’t profitable either but it’s a maybe better than mining, also due to the fact that all cryptocurrencies had fallen deeply and still falling, no one really know when it will pick up again or will it ever go back up again to like Bitcoin when Bitcoin hit $20K, today only around $3k. Masternodes it similar to mining, except no mining equipment needed, just a computer with verified wallet that hold the coins you would like to run masternodes and you profit by letting it run and act as a relay server to help transactions of the coins move smoothly vs mining required powerful GPU asic computer that uses a lot of electricity to do calculation and by chance your powerful mining rig would process a block and share it with other miners in the pool. ROI calculation will show you a maybe, better than mining for sure in term of profit. Masternodes profit more than mining because it does not use much electricity that’s about it, but in term of profit not really or nothing or maybe even loss because coins falling and initial invest will take longer and longer each day to get back.
Investing in cryptocurrencies is also a maybe profitable depend on how you invest. Forget about diversification, because if you do your homework all the cryptocoins followed bitcoin price. Yeah some of the coins might jump one day but not so often then after the jump it will go back down and in sync with other coins value, this case it’s Bitcoin. If Bitcoin go up all the other coins (98%) will follow bitcoin price because all coins most likely trade Bitcoin pair. Some people say diversify your coins investment? well based on the fact of what I just said, diversify really makes a different when you know all coins follow Bitcoin? save the headache and stick with one coins and forget about it until big news saying cryptocurrencies going up.
Lastly I want to say a little bit about ponzi scheme scam HYIP (high yield investment program) you’re taking super high risk, you will profit some at first, but the one that profit all are the owner operation of the program, most program run for 6 months, some 1 year and then began to have issue, issue that making you to believe is true but eventually those issue turned into not fixable not sustainable and disappeared slowly into the darkness and nothing anyone can do about it, by the time everyone realized it’s a scam the owner operator the supporters slowly disappeared (removing posts youtube videos) and so on and totally disappeared. Nothing anyone can do about it. They’re smarter than you, tricking you to believe, manipulating you, lots of actors on their team pretend to go against them and so on and so forth, they’re all actors.