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That is true. In fact, most comments suggest that this is a serious problem, that nobody can build a machine to keep up with the professionals that can create a machine, mine to drive up the difficulty, and then sell the machine to suckers before they realize it.

This comment for example was a pretty good argument: A fool and his moneys are soon parted."

I looked at mining bitcoins a couple of weeks ago for fun, and here's what I learned:

1. Bitcoin is incredibly volatile. When the Bank of China said that their branches couldn't conduct business in Bitcoin, the currency dropped from $1100 to $700. You can't calculate ROI when the currency can shift so dramatically. You might make a fortune in bitcoin, and you might lose big time.

2. The mining difficulty keeps increasing...which means that the machine you buy today will be completely and totally underpowered in 6 weeks. Underpowered machines aren't worth plugging in (seriously - they're junk after a few weeks).

3. There's a fantastic calculator you can use to figure out if a particular mining machine is worth buying here: http://mining.thegenesisblock....

Put in the cost of the machine, power reqs, and the date you plan to deploy it and it will show you how long it takes for a fancy new ASIC mining machine to become totally worthless.

Buying the TerraMiner IV, for example, will cost you about $4k by the time it's all said and done (assuming the value of one bitcoin stays at $740).

Bottom line: DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY. The "get rich by mining" goldrush is over.

I guess that means you could call it "work" to keep trying to update your computing power to stay ahead of the curve. Doesn't seem like work that has any real value to the world, but it seems mean to make a moral judgment about that. On the other hand, that was my point so I guess I'm mean when I say that I find it funny how many kids these days tell me they are going to earn a living playing computer games professionally. Bitcoin mining looks similar to me.
The more I think about the economics, the more it seems clear to me that you can't buy a machine and make money. Theoretically, the risk of an endeavor allows a venture capitalist to make money by just throwing money at a business. But if the "business" is bitcoin mining, and the money is just used to purchase a computer, then it makes no sense.
After all, if I have a company that can build a bitcoin mining machine that would actually pay for itself in 10 days, clearly I'd turn it on and mine bitcoins, because in 20 days I'd make twice as much money as I would selling it.
And if I was unscrupulous, I'd offer it for presale, get someone else to pay for it, use it to mine for 20 days, and then ship it out when the difficulty was too high for the machine to make me enough money. Like a ponzi scheme.
It seems logical that you can't possibly keep up. There are people who have millions of dollars available, and entire factories that can create machines. Nobody in their garage is going to be able to outproduce them, which means if there is an actual ROI to be had, it's going to be had by the millionaires with factories, not the guy in his basement no matter how hard he works.
But you are the guy working really hard building the computer. How are you managing to keep ahead of Bill Gates? Or maybe it's just that Bill isn't in it yet, and when he does decide to, bitcoin will both become finally real, and also finally worthless since he'll be able to put a million miners online in a day, and either flood the market, or simply drive up difficulty enough to put every other miner out of business.
Now that I think of it, bitcoin mining is a great example of "tragedy of the commons", and maybe a good study for game theory.