Question regarding difficulty and scrypt ASICs

[Ritual]

Hi all,

I've been working on a little plan to get into the scrypt mining game, which I've spread over 5-6 months. It'll end up with me having an approx 5 MHash miner for a cost of approx 1200 FIAT and about 2 BTC. These figures are based on starting out, investing FIAT til I hit a certain point, and reinvesting BTC after that. The link to the project is in my sig, but please understand that it has not had any updates this week as RL has barged in and I have to prioritise

However, I have 2 difficulties which I cannot factor in, and I hope the community might help.

1) Difficulty - is there any way to reliably project difficulty? Or is it solely based on the hashing power of the network? I realise that the new coins are much much more volatile in this regard, but say for example a reasonably established one like Litecoin? It'd make my life easier for sure if I could put this into my figures.

2) ASICs - I'm sure alot of people have seen the new Scrypt ASICs from LightningASIC. For about the same price as what I intend to spend, I could end up with a (maybe) comparable scrypt hash power for less electricity usage, but I am trying to predict the uptake and state of affairs in a few months. Let me clarify:

Plan a - my first plan, somewhat simplistic. Invest gradually in GPUs over a 5 month period, ending up owning a 6 GPU rig which would offer about 5 MH.

Plan b - reactionary plan when I saw the ASIC news. Same as above except "cash out" on the GPU rig and "cash back in" on ASIC miners, again reinvesting whatever BTC I had managed to scrape in the meantime.

Plan c - Go ASIC from the start, putting my same investment plan into effect but for Dualminers rather than GPUs. This would be slightly slower to pick up than GPUS, so i'd take me about 6 months to get to the same stage.

Anyone have any advice or guidance?

Thanks!

Rit.

[notlist3d]

Hi all,

I've been working on a little plan to get into the scrypt mining game, which I've spread over 5-6 months. It'll end up with me having an approx 5 MHash miner for a cost of approx 1200 FIAT and about 2 BTC. These figures are based on starting out, investing FIAT til I hit a certain point, and reinvesting BTC after that. The link to the project is in my sig, but please understand that it has not had any updates this week as RL has barged in and I have to prioritise

However, I have 2 difficulties which I cannot factor in, and I hope the community might help.

1) Difficulty - is there any way to reliably project difficulty? Or is it solely based on the hashing power of the network? I realise that the new coins are much much more volatile in this regard, but say for example a reasonably established one like Litecoin? It'd make my life easier for sure if I could put this into my figures.

2) ASICs - I'm sure alot of people have seen the new Scrypt ASICs from LightningASIC. For about the same price as what I intend to spend, I could end up with a (maybe) comparable scrypt hash power for less electricity usage, but I am trying to predict the uptake and state of affairs in a few months. Let me clarify:

Plan a - my first plan, somewhat simplistic. Invest gradually in GPUs over a 5 month period, ending up owning a 6 GPU rig which would offer about 5 MH.

Plan b - reactionary plan when I saw the ASIC news. Same as above except "cash out" on the GPU rig and "cash back in" on ASIC miners, again reinvesting whatever BTC I had managed to scrape in the meantime.

Plan c - Go ASIC from the start, putting my same investment plan into effect but for Dualminers rather than GPUs. This would be slightly slower to pick up than GPUS, so i'd take me about 6 months to get to the same stage.

Anyone have any advice or guidance?

Thanks!

Rit.

You wont get much spreading it out over 5-6 months.  If you do GPU go now, they will have some worth after. 

If you are investing that slow might think about just investing in coins directly.

[Ritual]

You're probably right, being honest about it, specially with the recent slight dip, but....I'm a bit of a geek at heart - I like the idea of being in on the mining scene too

[Ritual]

Did alot of reading and research today, and kinda answered my own questions.

Assuming a difficulty rise of 20% per month (which might be a bit OTT, but we'll see - and this is just for LTC network, not any other altcoin), and given the electricity costs, the ASICs are a no-brainer, assuming I can get hold of them.

Rit.