I have made a calculator for another thread that is asking a similar question. You may or may not be interested in the results. I certainly was.

Given a specified mining rig and electrical utility rate, I can show you at what difficulty your rig will not be profitable, compared to the current exchange rate of BTC. This should be applicable to solo or pooled mining.

Here is an example:
BFL 5Gh/s ASIC Miner in BLUE
Power consumption: 35 watts
Price of electricity: $0.10 USD/KWHr
Block Rewards: approx 25.5 BTC (25 for block, .5 for tx fees)

Avalon Batch 3 63Gh/s ASIC Miner in RED
Power consumption: 600 watts
Price of electricity: $0.10 USD/KWHr
Block Rewards: approx 25.5 BTC (same as above)

Result:


PM me for a personalized calculation. I will work for what ever tip size you feel I deserve.

16a2WVi1u3VFDcqvuWHTahk15UM9CxAnUh

I have made a calculator to answer just this question. Given a specified mining rig and electrical utility rate, I can show you at what difficulty your rig will not be profitable, compared to the current exchange rate of BTC. This should be applicable to solo or pooled mining.

Here is an example:
BFL 5Gh/s ASIC Miner in BLUE
Power consumption: 35 watts
Price of electricity: $0.10 USD/KWHr
Block Rewards: approx 25.5 BTC (25 for block, .5 for tx fees)

Avalon Batch 3 63Gh/s ASIC Miner in RED
Power consumption: 600 watts
Price of electricity: $0.10 USD/KWHr
Block Rewards: approx 25.5 BTC (same as above)

Result:


PM me for a personalized calculation. I will work for what ever tip size you feel I deserve.

16a2WVi1u3VFDcqvuWHTahk15UM9CxAnUh

It would be safe to say that they can indeed coexist. In fact, it may prove to be the ideal situation. At the moment, BTC dominates in value and size of user base, but that could just be the "first to arrive" advantage.

There are indeed many ways to use Bitcoin. I simply wanted to open a poll to get a snapshot of how people tend to be involved with this revolutionary currency.

My apologies if a similar poll has been done in the past.

Thanks for participating.  

*you are welcome to change your answer at any time*

But yes, anyone who is GPU mining will probably leave and mine some AltCoin, such as LiteCoin. But their combined hashing power will be nothing compared to the tidal wave of ASIC coming.

Except, remember what ASIC stands for: Application Specific Integrated Circuit.

Translation: this device does one job and one job only - mining Bitcoins. I don't have enough technical knowledge to tell you if the Bitcoin ASIC can mine for LTC, but I highly doubt it.

Well it is April 28th now, and it looks like the network strength around 80TH/s. (Source: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ ) As you can see, the trend is sharply upwards.

I am actually very happy that the ASICs are coming online, that means the system will become more robust as well as more energy efficient. The stronger our network is, the more secure. So even if my BFL miner doesn't show up in time to be very profitable, I will still gladly plug it in and do my part to keep the network secure.

I like that I can send a bitcoin payment to someone on the opposite side of the world just as easily as sending a payment to someone standing beside me.

As cheesy as this might sound, I think bitcoin will bring the people of the world closer together.

I ordered one this week, for good or ill - we shall see. BFL has repeatedly stated that orders done now can expect a delivery date of July, but as they have had delays in the past, I would only treat this as an estimate.

I doubt I will be racking in the 'coin with a single 5gh/s module in July, where the difficulty will have most likely doubled (or more?) by then. But, perhaps by joining a pool, I will be somewhat productive.

Also, even if I don't make anything off of this device, I want to support the bitcoin network, and the ASIC is the way to do this without a huge power bill.