From an economic perspective, even if we achieve stability in the type and capacity of the mining hardware coming online, we still would not be able to see any profits significantly greater than other investment vehicles. With the increased media exposure, and more availability of hardware, the hardware will be priced to a level that one can only make a "reasonable" rate of return for the risk involved. That is more where I am coming from. The easier it is for people to buy hardware and mine BTC the closer the rate of return will be to other means of making money which means it will be low.

I don't think the jump to $260 per BTC had much to do with ASIC. At that time the Cyprus banking crisis (aka government confiscation of people's money from their bank accounts) lead to a panic and distrust of government controlled currencies. There was a corresponding increase interest and demand for BTC and thus the price of BTC went up. When that panic subsided the demand for BTC went back down to more "normal" levels so the price fell.

I have done some "day trading" in BTC as your prior post recommended. I may do more now that my mining play money fund is larger. I ordered one of those UBS miners for $100 just so I can still be in the game. But it will mine peanuts and I calculated I'll only recover $50 over a 1 year period. The $50 I am giving away is the cost for me to stay in the game and have something to keep me motivated to stay up to date with mining.

What I find it very odd how people are spending about twice what they can recover with the  hardware they are buying. I did it consciously knowing when I ordered the little USB miner for the fun of it. That was a small amount for entertainment and educational purposes. But I see people spending thousands of dollars on hardware on eBay and such where they will only recover 50-75% of their investment. Perhaps people are only looking at the current payout and not factoring in the exponential growth in difficulty when they bid up the price of hardware.