Bitcoin pricing and its impact on mining power: Should I buy BTC or mine?

Hey everyone, I've been digging into Bitcoin lately and I have tons of questions, but I’ll keep it to just a few for now. First off, are there any solid guides out there for setting up a mining rig? Which operating system works best for mining? After the recent price drop, how do you think the network's mining power will be affected? Do you expect a big decrease? Is difficulty a major barrier to getting into mining, or will prices keep rising along with the difficulty? For me, mining feels like a way to get coins at a better price while managing risks. I believe in Bitcoin's future value, and mining seems like a less risky option that generates cash flow instead of just buying and holding. Any tips or insights would be awesome. Thanks for sharing your experiences!

You can see few of my guides to understand how to setup a Bitcoin ASIC miner. The links are in ny signature space. Btw, no need to use bolded text. I can read your post just fine without bolding.

Imho mixing up minig and holding is a mistake to be avoided. They're different things and even if you may do both, it's good to do the math separately. This being said, you'll have to make sure the mining you (would) do is profitable (counted like you would sell immediately all the coins you mine). And this usually means extremely cheap electricity. And since you didn't state what's the price for you, we don't know if you should start mining at all or not. Holding is clearly much easier, basically all you need is a safe wallet (preferably hardware wallet or - if you are tech savvy - cold storage). Of course, you need a strong hearth too, to handle the big price fluctuations. About price and difficulty... it's hard to tell.. sometimes price follows the difficulty, sometimes the difficulty has to follow the price. For example I remember the crypto winter in 2015-2016 when many miners gave up. such events happen rather rarely, but they did happen. So have to do the math and see for yourself, really, what would be the best course of action. PS. Since you've asked about OS there may be a chance that you were thinking on mining with GPUs and such. That mines altcoins, which you may or may not convert (automatically or not) into bitcoin. And if you go on that path, you should ask on the altcoin mining section of the forum. Here - in bitcoin mining - ASICs are used.