Here's the warning I wrote in November 2012. Pertinent then, still relevant today.
What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.
Sigh...
The period of the "couple of weeks for a lucky few" has long since passed.Oh it's still there, but the few have names now: BFL, Avalon, Hashfast, etc etc....
I'm still shocked people were able to +ROI in BTC with S1s.