I read stories about people spending $10,000 on mining rigs and setups and I can't help but shake my head. I think their only chance at recovering their costs is to sell their equipment, or accept they're rolling the dice on the long game for bitcoin.

Personally, I spent $199 on a new video card a couple weeks ago when after watching the bitcoin market for a while, decided it was worth making the initial investment to see where it goes. In that time, I've recouped most of my investment and am looking at how to handle things going forward.

At the current (and upcoming) difficulty level, I think CPU mining should be a thing of the past (unless you have suuuper cheap electricity). Additionally, GPU mining will become less profitable and it will take people longer to recoup their investments.

So honestly, I think after the next difficulty increase, it wouldn't make sense to invest money for the sole purpose of mining. The people who stand to make the most money are going to be the early adopters who have already made back their investment and everything from this point forward is pure profit.

At the current difficulty level, even my home computer is able to pull in about $1,500/yr in profit. After the next increase, it's going to drop to an estimated $910/yr in profit.

So really, people getting into it after the difficulty increase need to bank on the value on BTC keeping pace with the difficulty increases.