The recent increases in difficulty make me wonder.
For all of the people who bought (not constructed themselves, just bought for $$) ASIC miners for BTC - have they paid off? Including the electricity bills?
Whatever is being thrown to the market right now, looks like a great deal when it's announced, but it becomes worse deal after a monthj or two when the difficulty rises again.
I originally started with 6 BEs, then bought another 10 more, then bought another 9 more for a total of 25. When I purchased them, I knew I had little chance of making half of my money back on them...
Then I threw caution to the wind and against my better judgement I purchased an Avalon Mini 60gh/s rig off of eBay. I figured at the time, I'd at least make some of my return back on that hardware -- then one thing happened that really helped my ROI dreams -- Bitcoin value tripled! I can say in less than a month, I've almost paid off the Avalon Mini, and once that's done I'll work to recoup hopefully what I lost on the BEs.
What's going on the market now is probably hash-strong, but will presumably come with a steep price -- Hell, even the Avalon mini I bought for ~$1,100 US just recently was selling on eBay for $3,600+ which to me says mining is now either a rich man's game or still viable for someone who got in early enough with the right amount of hashing power ... not for the new/weak-in-pocket adopters.
