As I write this, I'm mining medicine.... I can't notice any slowdown on my computer, but I do hear the fan at full gear. It's a colder day outside so I do want the extra heat in my home, so the cost of mining for me is almost $0. That's smart mining. Where the byproduct is 100% useful. Many complain that mining bitcoin is wasting electricity. It produces heat as a byproduct and it is wasted. Is it if you were going to heat your home anyways? It comes down to which form of medium to heat the home is cheaper. But if you are heating the home and the byproduct now is mined coins... well, you got a winning solution.
But mining bitcoin is not very effective unless you have a powerful rig. I have an old laptop. And yet, I can get around $10/month leaving it to mine foldingcoin. I accumulate it over the winter and then I sell it for bitcoin in the spring when I'm not going to mine anymore. and get my last payout.
I not only heated my home and got subsidized for it, I was helping humanity in way. Mining for these new coins that keep coming up or whatever has the highest payout right now... unless you actually can generate any coin out of it AND you are invested in, I would say put your hashpower somewhere useful. Mining for profit is like working at mining camps to get quick rich when you don't care what crap you are mining. Wasting time and energy where it probably won't matter since many fail to produce a long term value in the end.
So put your machines to good use, get paid, run them when you want heat in your home and you'll be helping your ecosystem and your fellow humans at the same time.
