... If the "available units" on KNC's web are correct, that means that 1,000TH are still available. Considering the +150TH in Avalon chips, plus another 100TH by ASICMINER, and +400TH by BFL, that would take difficulty to at least to 200 million. Without even counting for Bitfury. ROI is going to be tough, guys. If there is someone so dumb to have asked for a loan to buy ASIC... He might better cancel his order, this is going to be a tough fight for peanuts - as mining has always been, apart from that small timeframe in which ASIC equipment supply was hyper-short, and the very lucky ones who had one unit took all the profits.
ref:
http://www.bitcoinx.com/charts/I'm trying to do some forecasting and risk analysis using the "bitcoin network vs. market linear, 30 days" charts and noticed that the "Mining Factor 100" (the USD per 24 hours at 100MHash/s) has dropped from 0.55 on May 21st to around 0.26 as of Jun 17th. That's a drop of around 50% in 1 month ... and, that drop happened with existing ASICs (I'm guessing mostly due to ASICminer, a few avalons, and the BFL jalapenos). At this rate, the "Mining Factor 100" could drop down to at least 0.13 by October. Using those estimates, if KnC, BFL and others deliver by October, each 350GHash (Jupiter) miner, for example, will take, at minimum, well over 5 months to breakeven ... and, that's assuming a lot (i.e., the BTC/USD rates stay about where they are today, no new competitors, no new game-changing technology, no new ASICs added to the market, the difficulty level continues as it has over the last several months, etc.). ... and, in order to earn the same in November 2013 as a Jupiter would earn today, I estimate that you will need to be mining with approximately 20 Jupiters by November. Worse, if KnC can't deliver until November, the breakeven might not happen until well over 2 years later. By March 2014, the Jupiter might be earning around 1 USD per day ... hhhmm.
In order to stay viable and profitable, it's really in our best interest to get everyone using Bitcoins: restaurants, websites, bit-tipping via cell phones, etc. Just like paypal is everywhere, "Pay-with-Bitcoin" needs to be everywhere. Over the past 5 months, when I've asked about 40 of my friends (in their 20s through 30s) if they had heard of bitcoins, only 2 said they had, but didn't understand it. So, I'm guessing there's still plenty of opportunity for Bitcoin's growth.
@Bitcoinorama: Did KnC say they plan to release all 2000 ASICs to the market at relatively the same time or spread out over several weeks?