Who is actually expecting to earn their investment back with these ASICs? If diff keeps rising you may never earn your investment back...
that's fine id rather pay 200w of hydro instead of 3500w for the same setup so for me it's a huge investment
yes that is the going concern. there are a few chinese fabricators that have completed and mass produced fpgas over the last 3 months, hence the spike in diff. gridseed has already developed and produced asic chips and released a beta sample. they are mass producing chips and rigs are being manufactured for them this month.
so if you can't get your alpha-t until july diff will probably be at 10k by then.
I fully expect difficulty to increase towards 10000 soon(ish). At that point it would most likely level off for some time, as this is the point where GPU's are just barely profitable, so they'd keep on leaving the network while ASICs enter the scene.
ROI would be achieved in 5-6 months with LTC, maybe sooner if price goes up or with the odd altcoin. Of course, price drops would make it more difficulty.
The more interesting question: (How) are you going to mine when difficulty is 10k? Not at all? Or you get an ASIC?
I don't know how to answer your last question, I got 15 cards running and have no clue what I should do with them once the asics hit the market, I did order one from Alpha-T though, so at least I'll have a chance at batch 2