I've set about 10k aside to play with for btc. Been researching since mid october (freaking shoot me, I should have just bought coins!)

Now that we've broken 1k, investing 10k in 10 coins seems pretty damn high risk.

I'm thinking a lower risk solution would be to invest in mining hardware that is available this second (ebay maybe knc's) and mine for a month or two while it's still decently profitable, then sell the equipment to someone who can afford to ride it out until it's mining is unprofitable here in 6-12 months.

That way I grab a few coins + get my cash back to buy more coins.

I've ran some number and this seems like a good solution, as long as BTC doesn't TRIPLE again in the next three months.

That seems ridiculous, right?. But I thought it was ridiculous that it would ever jump from 200 to 1000 in 3 months. fml.

The other option I'm wondering about is mining LTC? Could I spent 10k on LTC mining equipment and get the same results as spending 10k on hundreds of GHs of asics equipment?

Last but not least, why in the world am I hearing horror stories of getting money back out of mtgox?! If I have 10k in BTC and I need to jump into a stock I have cover that margin call in 3 days and I'd rather not use my savings. People are saying upwards of 15 weeks??? That can't be right?