I posed this question to #bitcoin, and they weren't very responsive, so here's a chatlog of my thoughts that I'd like to get some feedback on.
[16:35:02] maybe I'm just not seeing it
[16:35:10] but has anyone done some calculations
[16:35:20] based on the BFL ASIC waiting thread
[16:35:30] as to what the project difficulty will jump to
[16:35:39] in October/November/December
[16:36:04] and how that will affect how much that will affect the profitability of the different BFL ASIC
[16:36:49] ie. at the current moment, the BFG of the bunch, the SC Minirig, estimated at 1500GH/s by BFL, would currently earn $180,000/month at current rates
[16:37:02] obviously the difficulty is going to spike up when BFL starts delivering preorders
[16:37:21] and likely small miners are going to be forced out due to the difficulty spike
[16:37:31] but it seems like a lot of threads are ending there and focusing on the little guy
[16:38:06] what I'm interested in is what happens to the big guys? does $180,000/month today become $30,000/month almost overnight? or $15,000? or $1,000?
[16:41:22] Take for instance http://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89685.0
[16:41:42] if the current overall network hashing rate is estimated at 25TH/s
[16:41:57] and based on the data from the wait list
[16:42:11] which will likely not cover all the pre-orders made to BFL
[16:42:33] of a total increase of 48.339TH/s when everyone receives their units and flips the switch on
[16:43:22] thats almost a 3x increase in total hashing rate, and therefore a linear increase of 3x difficulty to accomodate the increased hashing rate
[16:43:50] Consulting a simple profit calculator http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator
[16:44:31] and multiplying the difficulty by 3x and plugging in 1500GH/s
[16:44:48] results in an expected return of $59,924.51/month
[16:45:17] which is significantly down from $180,000 but is still reasonable
[16:45:44] but if everyone quits mining because the difficulty is so high
[16:45:56] and lets pretend the exchange rate of bitcoin falls to $5/coin
[16:46:22] that results in an expected return of $25,024.91/month
[16:47:40] and I could what-if further along all day and make wild assumptions, but has anyone actually thought about the implications for the big guy, the guy that dropped $30K on a Minirig SC?
Thoughts, anyone? Am I overlooking some possibilities here? Is it possible for Minirig SC owners to net $180,000 for a month or two before, say, the block worth is cut in half, or the network collapses, or is it possible that almost upon arrival that Minirig SC owners will net $10,000 first month, $8,000 next, etc., and never earn back their initial investment?