Rampion is probably correct about the problem that will be caused by ASICs. When people were frenzied to buy AM Blades at 50BTC @ $120-130 USD it was under the condition wherein 13GH would mine you 25-30-40
BTC a month. But in the last few weeks difficulty has climbed so high that 13GH will mine you ~7
BTC per month, and this is just discussing the problem for people who have Blades, one of the only ASICs you can buy and actually have in-hand without a 2-6 month waiting period, and only discussing the problem in the context of current difficulty, and not considering the fact that $120-130 USD is pretty much out of reach right now.
On top of that, the market has lost a lot of its buyers. These large periods of stagnation and only being able to sustain $97-98 are because Gox is no longer experiencing the "several million USD are being wired to our exchange every day!
![Cheesy](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/cheesy.gif)
" phenomena that it was after/during the 266-50-165 era. A lot of the money that _was_ wired to Gox is now sitting in the hands of the whales who profited from the bubbles and in Gox's rake box. After all, the only reason we're not still sitting at 60-70 is because _one_ person put down a 15k
BTC market order to push it through $80. It's not because there were hundreds or thousands of people looking to buy, eating through resistance.
The dilemma with ASICs is similar to the dilemma created when lots of people buy at the top of a rush and momentum runs out and it drops hard after. Everyone wants to get out alive. It'll be worse with ASICs because people bought from frauds like BFL and Avalon who can't be fucked to actually deliver the product when it's ready because it's more profitable for them to mine on it themselves as "burn in", only delivering the miners to the people who paid for them when the ship has already sailed.
People are itchy indeed. Right now people are anxiously waiting to see if someone will market buy to carry us into $110s again. If it doesn't happen, we will definitely go down hard.