Ух как же она меня убивает!

Every 210000 blocks the amount of BTC per block is cut by 50%

@ NothinG That's funny that you mention that. I'm actually the opposite by waiting to see what difference the significant increase of miners will play on the market. If in 2 months it's still profitable because the prices of BTC follows or is better than the increase in difficulty I don't see that would be changing. I figure by that time I can sell my BTC and use the profit to buy my mining equipment. I can see your side of things too. I just found it amusing that we can have totally opposite trains of thought yet both be just as speculative. I'm an old day trader back before the .com bust and really this market gives me a lil bit of the adrenaline rush I got from day trading to the point of addiction.

@Economics It's totally a spectators market but that's what makes it so fun! There is just to few retailers out there allowing the use of bitcoins to believe the volume is due to people buying them to use them as currency

Am I the only newbie right now JUST buying bitcoins and not jumping on the mining bandwagon?

The 25BTC wont be until sometime in 2012. This is easily calculated based on the fact that only aprox 2016 coins a week are generated. If more are generated then the difficulty is increased of less are then it's decreased. So you'll be safe for awhile at 50BTC. However, I do believe the difficulty will be increasing greatly with all the miners jumping on board. I speculate that once difficulty increases so much that mining isn't worth while for most people they'll be firing down their rigs and selling their components on Ebay. That's what I'm sitting patiently waiting for since all the good components right now are scarce and overpriced. Then when all the get rich quick junkies out there getting out the difficulty should decrease. If that happens then I'll jump into the mining scene. If that doesn't happen then at least I'm not out anything. As of right now it's buying time. I'm just frustrated that there's a 3 day verification for bank accounts on Dwolla or I'd of had 100 coins at around $11 a piece. -.-

Ebay has a listing for multiple 5830's for $169 each with free shipping.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sapphire-Radeon-HD-5830-1GB-Xtreme-BNIB-/290576813327?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item43a7ba4d0f#ht_1003wt_1139

Hi, I'm a confused newb here. This Analysis doesn't make sense to me. My understanding is that there is a fixed amount of BTC to be mined each week. The difficulty is used to keep that fixed amount in check. The difficulty is currently increasing because the amount of rigs are increasing. The reason the amount of rigs are increasing is because there is big profit in mining right now. However, if the difficulty was increased so much that it was clearly not profitable then wouldn't most people shut down their rigs bringing the difficulty down? By this analysis, it shows that even when the difficulty is so high that it's clearly not profitable people will still bring new rigs online. Why would anyone bring new rigs online when the difficulty is clearly to high to make a profit?
Like I mentioned before, I am a complete newb here so I'm sure I'm missing something important in my understanding about how this works. Thanks for any clarification.