we have already invested more in undelivered BFL hardware than we currently have invested in the equipment currently running the network.
Unlikely. Current network hashrate is over 12 TH/s. More than 10 TH/s of this is probably due to GPUs.
That's roughly equivalent to ~33000 HD5830s who are the king of MH/$ of GPUs. So a lower bound on the $ invested in GPUs is currently $3.3 million USD.
OK, but according to this
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89685.0we have at least 1640 orders so far. Out of those we know that 82 of them are for a total of 14.76 Th. That's 180 Gh/order. Assuming this is a representative sample (which of course it might not be), we have 1640x180=295 Th ordered so far. At $30,000/Th, this is $8.85 million. Now, this is most likely an overestimate. The sample we have may not be representative, and some of the 1640 orders surely have been cancelled. But even if this estimate is off by a factor of 2, this is still $4.4 million. Of course, these estimates include the $ value of trade-ins, which is $ that are already in the network. But my statement was just about the $ invested in the current network vs $ invested in undelivered ASICs (including trade-ins). So I don't think my statement is all that unlikely, though as I said, it's not something I put forward as being really certain.
