I have been planning to cancel a BFL preorder I made a month ago (before the price doubled and hashrate dropped). I expect they're still a long way (3-6 months) from shipping real, production units. But they seem to have made real progress over the last few weeks. Even if the difficulty goes up by 10x (judging by Avalon chip orders, likely), the product is paid off in a month (at current BTC vs usd rate).

Will the difficulty be much more than 90 million by the time I receive the order? Or does it still look like they won't ship at all?

There's a good chance the fiat exchange rate will continue to increase (on average) faster than the difficulty for a while. But once ASICs are not supply-limited, we should expect mining to be no more profitable than direct BTC trading (as digicoin suggested).

I suppose this is better than nothing. But it might be more appropriate to submit 5 proof-of-works?

Relevant, I think?

Interested in DIY ASIC mining and Bitcoin market stability.