I hypothesize that difficulty increase will DOUBLE every 40 days from now until the market is flooded with ASICs
If we use this as a calculation for the difficulty rate in September we get:
15,000,000 x 1.20 ^ 4 = 31,104,000 (difficulty on 16/06/2013)
31,104,000 x 1.40 ^ 4 = 119,489,126 (difficulty on 26/07/2013)
119,489,126 x 1.80 ^ 4 = 1,254, 349,053 (difficulty on 1/09/2013)
These calculations presume that:
120 days till September
12 lots of 10
every 10 days difficulty increases
every 40 days that increase doubles
I hope i am wrong but at these levels even a 350Ghz miner in September wont really be a profitable ROI, even if the price of BTC was 350 USD
It could be some miners are hoping for a breaking point.. ie, it becomes so HARD to mine that MOST miners get out leaving only a hardcore group and eliminating some of the difficulty. I for one do not think difficulty will continue to climb.. eventually it will go down and only those few left mining will reap any rewards..