DO NOT BUY GPUs to mine! You will not get your money back!

[Amph]

Thanks for the discussion, everyone. This has been an interesting thread. While we're talking about profitability, I will use this soapbox to try to dissuade people from buying the ASICMINER USB miners. If you think you are going to make a profit with those, I believe you are sadly mistaken. I think they will make about 1 BTC over their useful life. Granted, there may be other reasons to buy them (they're cute). ASICMINER blades are also questionable due to their high prices, but at least you can get them NOW while difficulty is still relatively low. Those have a much better chance of breaking even than the USB devices.

Disclaimer: I own ASICMINER shares LOL

LMAO! Agreed! Those devices are 2BTC each, and will NEVER break even. There are a few group buys that have been put together to order 100 at a time, and it's all novelty buyers, or complete idiots who cannot do math.

Luckily, most of the imbeciles and novelty buyers trying to organize group buys on these things are about 200 units shy of a 300 unit minimum order. Good luck with that, ASICMINER. 

You think GPUs are a bad investment? The ASIC USB sticks are 1000 times worse. Not only will they never break even, they also have ZERO resale value/utility outside of Bitcoin mining. The only way they're gonna sell many unless they drop the price to .25BTC or less.

currently they are priced 2btc plus shipping, this is even worse

[1715380131]

1715380131

[1715380131]

1715380131

[marra]

ROI on GPU is about 2-8 months for the last 3 years and it'll stay that way, it's not only the ghashes that counts in this game, but also a number of peers as a relevant factor... asics will never be as cheap as gpu and therefore percentage wise number of peers criteria will always be on gpu side... I agree that the buzz about subcoins is just buzz, it's best to mine bitcoin, not subcoins...

[mgio]

ROI on GPU is about 2-8 months for the last 3 years and it'll stay that way, it's not only the ghashes that counts in this game, but also a number of peers as a relevant factor... asics will never be as cheap as gpu and therefore percentage wise number of peers criteria will always be on gpu side... I agree that the buzz about subcoins is just buzz, it's best to mine bitcoin, not subcoins...

what? It's all about the ghashes. What do you mean by "peers"? That has nothing to do with mining profitability. ASICs are already cheaper than GPUs when you look at from ghash/$. And it doesn't matter about the price anyways. Enough ASICs have already been sold to make GPU mining dead forever. Even if BFL never ships, the ASICs from ASICMiner and Avalon have already killed GPU mining. It's too late to upgrade to ASICs if you haven't already. Just sit back and watch the difficulty rise. You have maybe 2 months left of profitable GPU mining tops. Maybe only 1.

[wrenchmonkey]

Thanks for the discussion, everyone. This has been an interesting thread. While we're talking about profitability, I will use this soapbox to try to dissuade people from buying the ASICMINER USB miners. If you think you are going to make a profit with those, I believe you are sadly mistaken. I think they will make about 1 BTC over their useful life. Granted, there may be other reasons to buy them (they're cute). ASICMINER blades are also questionable due to their high prices, but at least you can get them NOW while difficulty is still relatively low. Those have a much better chance of breaking even than the USB devices.

Disclaimer: I own ASICMINER shares LOL

LMAO! Agreed! Those devices are 2BTC each, and will NEVER break even. There are a few group buys that have been put together to order 100 at a time, and it's all novelty buyers, or complete idiots who cannot do math.

Luckily, most of the imbeciles and novelty buyers trying to organize group buys on these things are about 200 units shy of a 300 unit minimum order. Good luck with that, ASICMINER. 

You think GPUs are a bad investment? The ASIC USB sticks are 1000 times worse. Not only will they never break even, they also have ZERO resale value/utility outside of Bitcoin mining. The only way they're gonna sell many unless they drop the price to .25BTC or less.

currently they are priced 2btc plus shipping, this is even worse

Technically, they're 1.9BTC, but I just rounded up to 2BTC, figuring in shipping. Shipping is probably actually more than that, so you're probably right.

[marra]

ROI on GPU is about 2-8 months for the last 3 years and it'll stay that way, it's not only the ghashes that counts in this game, but also a number of peers as a relevant factor... asics will never be as cheap as gpu and therefore percentage wise number of peers criteria will always be on gpu side... I agree that the buzz about subcoins is just buzz, it's best to mine bitcoin, not subcoins...

what? It's all about the ghashes. What do you mean by "peers"? That has nothing to do with mining profitability. ASICs are already cheaper than GPUs when you look at from ghash/$. And it doesn't matter about the price anyways. Enough ASICs have already been sold to make GPU mining dead forever. Even if BFL never ships, the ASICs from ASICMiner and Avalon have already killed GPU mining. It's too late to upgrade to ASICs if you haven't already. Just sit back and watch the difficulty rise. You have maybe 2 months left of profitable GPU mining tops. Maybe only 1.

Peer is an entity which participates in mining. Number of peers is a criteria that plays a role in support price level analysis. I thought as well that the ASIC will render GPU obsolete, but it didn't. Diff went up 5X during last couple of months.

It's almost paradoxical, number of peers rise, yet supply drops.

[glendall]

I think I side with the pessimists on this one.

I only started mining in March (besides a brief stint in 2010). Seeing the LTC difficulty go from about 60 to about 600 in less than 2 months was a depressing surprise. I knew difficulty went up quickly, but I didn't really get just how fast it went up until seeing it myself.

I don't think that BFL will ship in bulk, or over 5% of their orders. I think they'll run out of, or away with, the money (just my opinion.) But even with BFL out of the picture GPU mining is just about done.

There'll be more ASIC companies coming out. I think some of ya'll are in denial that we are at the start of the ASIC wave in earnest. As no one mines on CPUs hardly, no one will be mining in GPUs by the end of this year, I don't think...

Anyways I'm currently planning to sell my 5 video cards around mid-June, and put that money towards other Bitcoin  investments. I'm in Avalon batch 3 and plan to get into the next generation of ASICs whenever they become available.

Buying any new GPUs from this point forward, for mining, is not a good way to spend money IMHO.

[zvs]

7970's would be one of the worst cards to buy purely for mining as well... if you're going to game with it also, sure.

Otherwise you're purchasing a card that's going to decline in value (absolute $) more than any other card out there over the next few months

Are you jusy saying that because of the 8*** series cards coming out or?

newer technology always declines in value faster

if the next series comes out, then the effect would be even more pronounced

right now you can buy a 7850 or 7870 and if you do the rebate and sell the games, then you could already sell the card used and make a profit on it (actually, i suppose the card would still be "new")

[ThatDGuy]

I think I side with the pessimists on this one.

I only started mining in March (besides a brief stint in 2010). Seeing the LTC difficulty go from about 60 to about 600 in less than 2 months was a depressing surprise. I knew difficulty went up quickly, but I didn't really get just how fast it went up until seeing it myself.

At 600 though, today's LTC value has them at about 96% of a Bitcoin.  The difficulty spike has followed the massive spike in value.  There's no way miners wouldn't shift for the sake of arbitrage.

I don't think that BFL will ship in bulk, or over 5% of their orders. I think they'll run out of, or away with, the money (just my opinion.) But even with BFL out of the picture GPU mining is just about done.

There'll be more ASIC companies coming out. I think some of ya'll are in denial that we are at the start of the ASIC wave in earnest. As no one mines on CPUs hardly, no one will be mining in GPUs by the end of this year, I don't think...

While I think part of this is true, I think in the short term (1-1.5 years) you are not including two major factors in ASIC mining that will contribute heavily to how the mining aspect of cryptocurrency plays out:

• Ease of Acquiring

This is a big deal right now.  If you weren't already in the game and have some BTC, you cannot currently easily buy an ASIC miner.  Up until this point, mining was driven by the ability for someone technically capable to go online and spend fiat to either buy another CPU, or buy more GPUs and have them running within a week or two.  This is no longer the case, and until ASICs are put out by a few companies, shipping within a week, and selling for fiat - there will be a significant amount of miners who have a vested interest in keeping GPU mining relevant.

• Specificity of Application

Separately, it is no longer a trivial decision for a miner to decide to start mining by using an ASIC.  This isn't buying a CPU that you can use all the time and turn on to mine when you're sleeping.  It's not a GPU you can use when not mining for awesome graphics.  You can't resell an ASIC for anything other than Bitcoin mining - and if Bitcoin goes away, it's worthless.  This shifts mining from something that can be done by anyone to now a smaller group who is buying equipment for just that purpose and likewise will need a higher ROI to break even.

These two factors above will absolutely play a big role in the mid-term while the ease of acquiring ASICS works itself out.  Scrypt and LTC could go away, but I don't think that will be the case.

Anyways I'm currently planning to sell my 5 video cards around mid-June, and put that money towards other Bitcoin  investments. I'm in Avalon batch 3 and plan to get into the next generation of ASICs whenever they become available.

Buying any new GPUs from this point forward, for mining, is not a good way to spend money IMHO.

Overall, I think this is the most sound plan - one that I intend to follow, but only once I can sell my GPUs and have that sale money turned around to buy an ASIC in the same week.  Buying GPUs now is a riskier investment, but hardly a guarantee to be a failure either - it's impossible to say what a brand new fresh batch of speculators would do when LTC pops up on a big exchange and they want to diversify some of their investment in a coin that they can buy a large quantity of for cheap on a psychological level.[/list]

[Mhash pipe]

ASICs may be coming, but pre-ordering is stupid because you can at least begin to mine right now with a GPU instead of having to wait/pray for deliveries. I am speculating that the wave of ASICs will drive up the difficulty rather quickly and as a result drive down the demand (people will quickly learn that ASICs aren't "money-printing machines"). The lower demand along with increased competition among suppliers (companies won't be "scalping" once they can efficiently bring more ASICs to the market and the demand is lower; maybe even new companies will come up with cheaper and cheaper designs) will cause the price of  ASICs to drop drastically. At that point, I will probably buy an ASIC, only if I can get a return on my investment.

But, putting my money in the hands of someone else when there are still nice profits to be made right now with GPUs is stupid. You are paying the price in terms of lost opportunity and paying a premium for something that will probably depreciate by 10-100x once production increases. I'm waiting for the cheap knock-offs, but in the meantime I'm keeping my money in my own hands and using GPUs to mine. If I really wanted to speculate, I would probably just buy btcs.

[GodHatesFigs]

ThatDGuy nailed it

[btchaver]

Wait. I'm confused. You are saying you will earn $293 on the card but you won't get your money back? When you are done with the GPU resell it. I imagine in a year 7950s will fetch $150 so your $275 investment returned $443 when shutting down the operation.

Unlike ASICs, there is an aftermarket for GPUs.

GPus do waste energy and asics saves energy by a big difference which outweighs the reusability of the gpu in my opinion not to say i dont want to mine with gpu just my opinion becasue i dont have asics i have no choice.

[mgio]

ASICs may be coming, but pre-ordering is stupid because you can at least begin to mine right now with a GPU instead of having to wait/pray for deliveries. I am speculating that the wave of ASICs will drive up the difficulty rather quickly and as a result drive down the demand (people will quickly learn that ASICs aren't "money-printing machines"). The lower demand along with increased competition among suppliers (companies won't be "scalping" once they can efficiently bring more ASICs to the market and the demand is lower; maybe even new companies will come up with cheaper and cheaper designs) will cause the price of  ASICs to drop drastically. At that point, I will probably buy an ASIC, only if I can get a return on my investment.

But, putting my money in the hands of someone else when there are still nice profits to be made right now with GPUs is stupid. You are paying the price in terms of lost opportunity and paying a premium for something that will probably depreciate by 10-100x once production increases. I'm waiting for the cheap knock-offs, but in the meantime I'm keeping my money in my own hands and using GPUs to mine. If I really wanted to speculate, I would probably just buy btcs.

You have maybe a month left of being able to mine with GPUs. No GPU you buy today will be able to pay for itself that quickly.

Yes, people will stop buying ASICs when they realize they aren't making any money with them because difficulty is way up there (in the several hundred million range).

The problem is that enough ASICs to hit that number have already been sold (but not delivered) and people will continue to buy them until the difficulty actually gets that high.

You have to compete with:
- Avalon batch 2 (just began to ship)
- Avalon batch 3 (shipping soon)
- ASICMiner USB and blades (blades available now, USB shipping soon)
- BFL 60,000+ orders (ok they may never ship all their orders, but they will ship enough to make an impact of difficulty)
- A couple of hundreds thousand discrete Avalon chips
- ASICMiner's claimed 200 TH they are adding this summer

All of those have already been paid for and are on their way. It's too late for GPUs.

[mgio]

While I think part of this is true, I think in the short term (1-1.5 years) you are not including two major factors in ASIC mining that will contribute heavily to how the mining aspect of cryptocurrency plays out:

• Ease of Acquiring

This is a big deal right now.  If you weren't already in the game and have some BTC, you cannot currently easily buy an ASIC miner.  Up until this point, mining was driven by the ability for someone technically capable to go online and spend fiat to either buy another CPU, or buy more GPUs and have them running within a week or two.  This is no longer the case, and until ASICs are put out by a few companies, shipping within a week, and selling for fiat - there will be a significant amount of miners who have a vested interest in keeping GPU mining relevant.

Yes, all the present GPU miners would love to keep GPU mining relevant but that is not going to happen just because they want it. There have already been enough ASICs pre-ordered and on their way to kill GPU mining for good. I listed them in moy other thread, but you have 2 batches of Avalon miners, plus hundreds of thousands of discrete chips, all the BFL pre-orders, ASICMiner USB and Blade sales, plus the 200TH ASICMiner is adding this summer. That is ASICs that are already coming. They were ordered long ago and just beginning to ship now. Even if a single new ASIC was never sold from here on out, GPU mining would still be dead. I don't think GPU mining can survive a couple hundred million difficulty and that is what we are going to see soon.

Overall, I think this is the most sound plan - one that I intend to follow, but only once I can sell my GPUs and have that sale money turned around to buy an ASIC in the same week.  Buying GPUs now is a riskier investment, but hardly a guarantee to be a failure either - it's impossible to say what a brand new fresh batch of speculators would do when LTC pops up on a big exchange and they want to diversify some of their investment in a coin that they can buy a large quantity of for cheap on a psychological level.[/list]

GPU mining can only live due to litecoin. But I believe litecoin will die sooner than later because it is purely used for speculation. You can't spend it anywhere and it offers 0 advantages over bitcoin. It's going to be a market of litecoin miners selling litecoins to each other. No one else buys them.

When ASICs are cheap and easy to buy within a week they won't be profitable anymore. The margins will be so low that only people with free electricity will even bother. Competition will drive the price down so they just barely make their money back, I'm guessing in a year or two. It will be a low margin grind and won't be much fun except for those who really enjoy mining for it's own sake.

[Amph]

ASICs may be coming, but pre-ordering is stupid because you can at least begin to mine right now with a GPU instead of having to wait/pray for deliveries. I am speculating that the wave of ASICs will drive up the difficulty rather quickly and as a result drive down the demand (people will quickly learn that ASICs aren't "money-printing machines"). The lower demand along with increased competition among suppliers (companies won't be "scalping" once they can efficiently bring more ASICs to the market and the demand is lower; maybe even new companies will come up with cheaper and cheaper designs) will cause the price of  ASICs to drop drastically. At that point, I will probably buy an ASIC, only if I can get a return on my investment.

But, putting my money in the hands of someone else when there are still nice profits to be made right now with GPUs is stupid. You are paying the price in terms of lost opportunity and paying a premium for something that will probably depreciate by 10-100x once production increases. I'm waiting for the cheap knock-offs, but in the meantime I'm keeping my money in my own hands and using GPUs to mine. If I really wanted to speculate, I would probably just buy btcs.

You have maybe a month left of being able to mine with GPUs. No GPU you buy today will be able to pay for itself that quickly.

Yes, people will stop buying ASICs when they realize they aren't making any money with them because difficulty is way up there (in the several hundred million range).

The problem is that enough ASICs to hit that number have already been sold (but not delivered) and people will continue to buy them until the difficulty actually gets that high.

You have to compete with:
- Avalon batch 2 (just began to ship)
- Avalon batch 3 (shipping soon)
- ASICMiner USB and blades (blades available now, USB shipping soon)
- BFL 60,000+ orders (ok they may never ship all their orders, but they will ship enough to make an impact of difficulty)
- A couple of hundreds thousand discrete Avalon chips
- ASICMiner's claimed 200 TH they are adding this summer

All of those have already been paid for and are on their way. It's too late for GPUs.

the only factor here are the baldes, and usb(but they have low hash power) all the others, are vaporware for now, and this trend will continue at least until end of august

[Bitsaurus]

ASICs may be coming, but pre-ordering is stupid because you can at least begin to mine right now with a GPU instead of having to wait/pray for deliveries. I am speculating that the wave of ASICs will drive up the difficulty rather quickly and as a result drive down the demand (people will quickly learn that ASICs aren't "money-printing machines"). The lower demand along with increased competition among suppliers (companies won't be "scalping" once they can efficiently bring more ASICs to the market and the demand is lower; maybe even new companies will come up with cheaper and cheaper designs) will cause the price of  ASICs to drop drastically. At that point, I will probably buy an ASIC, only if I can get a return on my investment.

But, putting my money in the hands of someone else when there are still nice profits to be made right now with GPUs is stupid. You are paying the price in terms of lost opportunity and paying a premium for something that will probably depreciate by 10-100x once production increases. I'm waiting for the cheap knock-offs, but in the meantime I'm keeping my money in my own hands and using GPUs to mine. If I really wanted to speculate, I would probably just buy btcs.

You have maybe a month left of being able to mine with GPUs. No GPU you buy today will be able to pay for itself that quickly.

Yes, people will stop buying ASICs when they realize they aren't making any money with them because difficulty is way up there (in the several hundred million range).

The problem is that enough ASICs to hit that number have already been sold (but not delivered) and people will continue to buy them until the difficulty actually gets that high.

You have to compete with:
- Avalon batch 2 (just began to ship)
- Avalon batch 3 (shipping soon)
- ASICMiner USB and blades (blades available now, USB shipping soon)
- BFL 60,000+ orders (ok they may never ship all their orders, but they will ship enough to make an impact of difficulty)
- A couple of hundreds thousand discrete Avalon chips
- ASICMiner's claimed 200 TH they are adding this summer

All of those have already been paid for and are on their way. It's too late for GPUs.

the only factor here are the baldes, and usb(but they have low hash power) all the others, are vaporware for now, and this trend will continue at least until end of august

Obviously you don't visit the custom hardware subforum.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=209077.20

Does that look like vaporware?  Batch 2/3 should be completed by June (their new shipping got to the US in 3 days).  Those alone will double the current difficulty - putting a lot of miners into negative earnings territory.  Only people winter mining should consider continuing past June with any real hope of profits.

If friedcat gets those 200TH online then that will be nail in the coffin.

[marra]

increased network difficulty only means that someone will make less btc, not less $... amount of earned $ could be smaller, but at the same time, perhaps with even larger probability, it could be greater since btc derives value from resources invested in it... btc gpu mining will stay as winner in number of peers, you can bet on that... custom asic and fpga producers will never have production capabilities as ati and nvidia, since there will always be more gamers in the world than miners... small custom lines will produce asics and large scale will produce gpus... in 5 years, asics will be cheaper to some degree, but market delivery of gpu compared to asic will be the same...

[Amph]

ASICs may be coming, but pre-ordering is stupid because you can at least begin to mine right now with a GPU instead of having to wait/pray for deliveries. I am speculating that the wave of ASICs will drive up the difficulty rather quickly and as a result drive down the demand (people will quickly learn that ASICs aren't "money-printing machines"). The lower demand along with increased competition among suppliers (companies won't be "scalping" once they can efficiently bring more ASICs to the market and the demand is lower; maybe even new companies will come up with cheaper and cheaper designs) will cause the price of  ASICs to drop drastically. At that point, I will probably buy an ASIC, only if I can get a return on my investment.

But, putting my money in the hands of someone else when there are still nice profits to be made right now with GPUs is stupid. You are paying the price in terms of lost opportunity and paying a premium for something that will probably depreciate by 10-100x once production increases. I'm waiting for the cheap knock-offs, but in the meantime I'm keeping my money in my own hands and using GPUs to mine. If I really wanted to speculate, I would probably just buy btcs.

You have maybe a month left of being able to mine with GPUs. No GPU you buy today will be able to pay for itself that quickly.

Yes, people will stop buying ASICs when they realize they aren't making any money with them because difficulty is way up there (in the several hundred million range).

The problem is that enough ASICs to hit that number have already been sold (but not delivered) and people will continue to buy them until the difficulty actually gets that high.

You have to compete with:
- Avalon batch 2 (just began to ship)
- Avalon batch 3 (shipping soon)
- ASICMiner USB and blades (blades available now, USB shipping soon)
- BFL 60,000+ orders (ok they may never ship all their orders, but they will ship enough to make an impact of difficulty)
- A couple of hundreds thousand discrete Avalon chips
- ASICMiner's claimed 200 TH they are adding this summer

All of those have already been paid for and are on their way. It's too late for GPUs.

the only factor here are the baldes, and usb(but they have low hash power) all the others, are vaporware for now, and this trend will continue at least until end of august

Obviously you don't visit the custom hardware subforum.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=209077.20

Does that look like vaporware?  Batch 2/3 should be completed by June (their new shipping got to the US in 3 days).  Those alone will double the current difficulty - putting a lot of miners into negative earnings territory.  Only people winter mining should consider continuing past June with any real hope of profits.

If friedcat gets those 200TH online then that will be nail in the coffin.

for asic blades, i mean everything produced by avalon, they are the only one legit , they also need to double the hash to make the diff x2, and those avalon asic are expensive, few people will buy them, in the end at least until the end of this summer, gpu are not dead

[mgio]

ASICs may be coming, but pre-ordering is stupid because you can at least begin to mine right now with a GPU instead of having to wait/pray for deliveries. I am speculating that the wave of ASICs will drive up the difficulty rather quickly and as a result drive down the demand (people will quickly learn that ASICs aren't "money-printing machines"). The lower demand along with increased competition among suppliers (companies won't be "scalping" once they can efficiently bring more ASICs to the market and the demand is lower; maybe even new companies will come up with cheaper and cheaper designs) will cause the price of  ASICs to drop drastically. At that point, I will probably buy an ASIC, only if I can get a return on my investment.

But, putting my money in the hands of someone else when there are still nice profits to be made right now with GPUs is stupid. You are paying the price in terms of lost opportunity and paying a premium for something that will probably depreciate by 10-100x once production increases. I'm waiting for the cheap knock-offs, but in the meantime I'm keeping my money in my own hands and using GPUs to mine. If I really wanted to speculate, I would probably just buy btcs.

You have maybe a month left of being able to mine with GPUs. No GPU you buy today will be able to pay for itself that quickly.

Yes, people will stop buying ASICs when they realize they aren't making any money with them because difficulty is way up there (in the several hundred million range).

The problem is that enough ASICs to hit that number have already been sold (but not delivered) and people will continue to buy them until the difficulty actually gets that high.

You have to compete with:
- Avalon batch 2 (just began to ship)
- Avalon batch 3 (shipping soon)
- ASICMiner USB and blades (blades available now, USB shipping soon)
- BFL 60,000+ orders (ok they may never ship all their orders, but they will ship enough to make an impact of difficulty)
- A couple of hundreds thousand discrete Avalon chips
- ASICMiner's claimed 200 TH they are adding this summer

All of those have already been paid for and are on their way. It's too late for GPUs.

the only factor here are the baldes, and usb(but they have low hash power) all the others, are vaporware for now, and this trend will continue at least until end of august

Obviously you don't visit the custom hardware subforum.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=209077.20

Does that look like vaporware?  Batch 2/3 should be completed by June (their new shipping got to the US in 3 days).  Those alone will double the current difficulty - putting a lot of miners into negative earnings territory.  Only people winter mining should consider continuing past June with any real hope of profits.

If friedcat gets those 200TH online then that will be nail in the coffin.

for asic blades, i mean everything produced by avalon, they are the only one legit , they also need to double the hash to make the diff x2, and those avalon asic are expensive, few people will buy them, in the end at least until the end of this summer, gpu are not dead

The 1200 Avalon ASICs from batch 2 and 3 ALREADY SOLD will add roughly 80 TH/sec to the world hashing power. That alone will double the difficulty.

[Littleshop]

All I can say is that when I sell my GPU's I am getting almost what I paid for them after a year or more of mining.  I have sold 5970's for more then I paid for them, including recent sales over $350 with an original cost of $329 (new).  If you buy and sell GPU's carefully you will do fine even now.  Today the card to buy is 7950's, especially if you can get them used, rebated or discounted. 

[Amph]

ASICs may be coming, but pre-ordering is stupid because you can at least begin to mine right now with a GPU instead of having to wait/pray for deliveries. I am speculating that the wave of ASICs will drive up the difficulty rather quickly and as a result drive down the demand (people will quickly learn that ASICs aren't "money-printing machines"). The lower demand along with increased competition among suppliers (companies won't be "scalping" once they can efficiently bring more ASICs to the market and the demand is lower; maybe even new companies will come up with cheaper and cheaper designs) will cause the price of  ASICs to drop drastically. At that point, I will probably buy an ASIC, only if I can get a return on my investment.

But, putting my money in the hands of someone else when there are still nice profits to be made right now with GPUs is stupid. You are paying the price in terms of lost opportunity and paying a premium for something that will probably depreciate by 10-100x once production increases. I'm waiting for the cheap knock-offs, but in the meantime I'm keeping my money in my own hands and using GPUs to mine. If I really wanted to speculate, I would probably just buy btcs.

You have maybe a month left of being able to mine with GPUs. No GPU you buy today will be able to pay for itself that quickly.

Yes, people will stop buying ASICs when they realize they aren't making any money with them because difficulty is way up there (in the several hundred million range).

The problem is that enough ASICs to hit that number have already been sold (but not delivered) and people will continue to buy them until the difficulty actually gets that high.

You have to compete with:
- Avalon batch 2 (just began to ship)
- Avalon batch 3 (shipping soon)
- ASICMiner USB and blades (blades available now, USB shipping soon)
- BFL 60,000+ orders (ok they may never ship all their orders, but they will ship enough to make an impact of difficulty)
- A couple of hundreds thousand discrete Avalon chips
- ASICMiner's claimed 200 TH they are adding this summer

All of those have already been paid for and are on their way. It's too late for GPUs.

the only factor here are the baldes, and usb(but they have low hash power) all the others, are vaporware for now, and this trend will continue at least until end of august

Obviously you don't visit the custom hardware subforum.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=209077.20

Does that look like vaporware?  Batch 2/3 should be completed by June (their new shipping got to the US in 3 days).  Those alone will double the current difficulty - putting a lot of miners into negative earnings territory.  Only people winter mining should consider continuing past June with any real hope of profits.

If friedcat gets those 200TH online then that will be nail in the coffin.

for asic blades, i mean everything produced by avalon, they are the only one legit , they also need to double the hash to make the diff x2, and those avalon asic are expensive, few people will buy them, in the end at least until the end of this summer, gpu are not dead

The 1200 Avalon ASICs from batch 2 and 3 ALREADY SOLD will add roughly 80 TH/sec to the world hashing power. That alone will double the difficulty.

i'm still not worried, i'll stop mining with my gpu only when the difficulty will reach 50m