Contrary to popular belief, plutonium is not a synthetic element:

Quoteth wiki: "Plutonium is the heaviest primordial element by virtue of its most stable isotope, plutonium-244, whose half-life of about 80 million years is just long enough for the element to be found in trace quantities in nature."

Don't forget to add 10% GST plus Customs duty for processing the paperwork to get the unit into Australia.

Can difficulty increase 30% every 2000 blocks for months on end?  Eventually people will stop ordering new ASICs if their ROI disappears and the growth in difficulty will taper off.

What we have to deal with first is the massive backlog of BFL and other orders still to appear on the network. 

Energy cannot be created, and it cannot be destroyed.  There is no 'ether' background energy in the universe to tap into and exploit without cost.  Plenty of youtube videos claim otherwise but the claims are always, without exception, frauds or jokes on gullible viewers.

It's always curious how people like the OP only post their winning trades.  A bit like the casino player who claims they usually win.  If the OP is highly successful in his trades and making money then why does he need to tell everyone how he does it?  Usually people like this shut up and keep quiet.  It reminds me of cold callers telling me about this week's fantastic opportunity to make loads of money.  If the deal is so good why aren't they mortgaging their own home and maxing out the credit cards to use it themselves?

"Beware the advice of successful people; they do not seek company"
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-05-13/

The 'coulda woulda shoulda' approach to investing is always dangerous.  I'm sure many of us wished we had bought bitcoins when the bubble burst from $32 to $2 in late 2011.  I wish I hadn't stopped mining back then, or sold bitcoins in 2011 that were generated on a lowly GPU that at today's price was generating $100 per day.  If only... if only... you'll be much happier abandoning all such thoughts.

Bitcoin is itself an insidious trap.  If your ASIC mines a bitcoin today do you sell it to cover the ASIC's cost and electricity requirements, or do you hold it for another 3 years and hope to get $1k for the bitcoin?  Or wait longer?  In fact, why use bitcoins at all when their value tomorrow is 'guaranteed' to be worth more than today?

I wish there was a way to bet on this.  Between August 2014 and February 2015 mining hardware will be selling for 1/20th of the current price?  Bear in mind that comparison is made against the cheapest hardware available today, the BFL Monarch.  Only problem is it's not available today, and will possibly ship by December 2013 and probably January or February 2014.  Within 7 to 13 months after that the price on the card will collapse to around $300?  Hmm.

Bitcoin was always about making a bank free transaction system, not about making people guaranteed double digit returns.  The former is the feature, the latter a side effect that can cease to exist.  There are already more than enough bitcoins out there for the few businesses that use them to adequately transfer money.  Users of bitcoins don't care one bit how much processing time, hardware, or power was used to create the bitcoin.  To the end user it doesn't matter whether they're using a bitcoin generated on a Pentium 4 in 2010 or an ASIC today. 

There are more than enough hobbyists, true believers and people with vested interest in bitcoin to continue mining long after it's no longer profitable to do so.  Mining didn't cease in late 2011 when the price collapsed 90% from its bubble.

In early 2011 I saw a headline on slashdot about bitcoin's price crossing $1.  I didn't take much notice then, but a few weeks later was puzzled as to why the cracking rate on Distributed.Net's RC5-72 challenge was dropping off.  Where were the GPUs going that were previously used on that?  That's when I did some digging around and saw they could be used for bitcoin.  Been following and mining bitcoin ever since.

"they're", not their.

Bitcoin will only appreciate in value "forever" if people who want to own bitcoins are willing to pay ever higher prices for them.  There is also always scope for something better, faster and easier to use to come along which can send bitcoin's value plummeting.  Enjoy the ride and don't forget to cash out to cover all costs.

Indians with their money in gold instead of rupee must be smiling right now.  Bitcoin adds the benefit of easily bypassing government capital controls too.  There is a long and proud history of owning gold and being skeptical of paper money in the country.

The problems for Indian bitcoin adoption are large however.  Unless an easy to use bitcoin client is available for very basic mobile phones most Indians could not afford to own, transmit and receive bitcoins.  The country is plagued by frequent blackouts (every PC has a UPS) which may undermine people's trust in a purely electronic currency.  

I am one of the still relatively rare happy BFL customers who received my order within only 9 months of ordering.  Watching the difficulty with which BFL developed the product and after experiencing the many levels of frustration that BFL unleashed, I am very reluctant to buy the new product.  Maybe I'm a fool and when people are mining in early 2014 with these devices I'll be green with jealousy, but in the meantime I can live without the stress of potentially losing my money.  Despite BFL already having experience with ASICs, I feel moving to a new process and new board design will make it unlikely the product will ship any time during 2013.

No credit card option and therefore no protection from BFL going under before they can ship makes the deal untenable.

Many people I know have no idea how much electricity costs, apart from "too much".  Power bills don't pop out separate billing for mining and some people are spectacularly bad at maths or just ignorant.  You would be surprised how many people consider spending $1 per day for 180 days to be cheaper than buying a bitcoin for $100 solely because they see the $100 hit all in one go.

Then there's the case of junior running a mining operation from his bedroom (early bitcoin miners would have plenty of 50c per bitcoin coins) and dad not noticing until it's too late.  Junior may not have $1k to buy some bitcoins but he sure can leech off daddy's power bill as it's 'free'.

There are three things that can kill bitcoin: narcotics trade, underage porn, and funding terrorism.  Any one of these three can be used by major governments around the world to declare the trade in bitcoins illegal.  That would automatically scare off any bank from converting bitcoins to money and back again.  Banks that continue to facilitate trade would be locked out of the international money markets.  It wouldn't be worth supporting a niche market like bitcoin.

I don't think gambling is a threat however.  Site operators are unlikely to hoard everything they earn simply because there needs to be trade and a velocity of bitcoins being traded for them to be worth anything.  If a group locked up all 21 million bitcoins tomorrow they would become worthless overnight as everyone else moves to another trading platform.

Currently it costs me $3 to create one bitcoin worth $100 using my ASICs with very high power costs.  Someone in China on a commercial power contract would probably be cranking bitcoins out at the cost of 50c each.  Therefore mining will remain profitable for a very long time to come.  The difficulty could be 30 times higher than it is today with no change in bitcoin's price and I would still mine.

You're right that we can't continue at 75% per month.  Eventually sanity prevails and people see ASICs no longer are rivers of gold.  Currently however, they are.  If you can get your hands on a BFL unit right now it's all good.

The oil is never 'finished'.  Production will never cease under Peak Oil theory and it will always be available.  What Peak Oil does predict is that demand will eventually outstrip supply because supply falls.  The price (in real terms) then rockets up as customers compete for what's available.  Many people become priced out of the market and cannot buy fuel or the products its made from.  But oil never actually runs out.

How will that affect bitcoin?  Well, if the situation ever arises I think we have far more important things to worry about than an internet commodity.  Like food, water, and security.

Yes, I sold the bitcoins and converted them to my local currency.  Once the money arrives in my bank account it's a little hard to hide the income from the government    I don't declare bitcoins still in my wallet as to me, they're like shares or a brick of silver with constantly fluctuating value. 

The interesting thing about the last price mania and run up from $10 to $266 within a few months is why $266 was the magic number this time.  It could be that the number of suckers left to pile money in ran out, or maybe enough people thought 'this price has been rising exponentially for weeks, it violates common sense for it to continue, sell!' 

If bitcoin enjoys another strong run up towards $1k and maybe beyond we will again experience the same situation.  The key factor is, as always, that simply sitting on your bitcoin stash while doing absolutely nothing is the path to riches.  That doesn't seem sustainable.

ROI achieved on Jalapenos received in early July, including electricity, interest, and tax (yes, income tax on income earned).  Paid with USD$ and have now received more USD$ than previous input.  Mission accomplished.

 Anyone buying an ASIC today needs to have fast delivery.  BFL will in the very best scenario ship new 5Gh orders made today by the end of September.