it's high time to think about buying asic, if you are a miner. now only they can earn a normal amount. you can't do that on video cards
Well now is the time to order, isn't it - was going to order but Bitmain's prices are just too high, $480 for the S9k, plus import? I can get it for the same INCLUDING power supply on eBay from US sellers, so no point really. 6-8 months to ROI even with no power costs? No thanks. Difficulty will be 30-50% harder by then too. There's just no margins left basically. Maybe a huge facility with almost free power power and that cares enough to spend the $480 to hopefully eek out double that amount over the next three years of running the machine.
If Bitcoin were to double in the year, doesn't even make sense to buy one ASIC... difficulty will only pile on faster. Even in 2017 when it was all time high, difficult was much lower than it is now. The demand has been met, it would look like... only thin margins remain.
GPUs are still worth 40% of what they cost, but man, they'll keep dropping too. Already been a year since the 20xx series were announced.
If you are worried about losing money on hardware then you should just stick with GPUs. They will always have a market for Gamers and Youtube Video renders, while ASICs on the other hand become expensive door stops.
If you buy a bunch of second hand GPUs these days they won't go down in value too much unless you are getting the high end Nvidia stuff. If you buy a new ASIC today then most likely you will lose alot of money if BTC starts a bear market in the near future.
So you are better off just not buying ASICs, especially since its going to be a hassle getting 240V.