Re: Will the difficulty go down again ?

I agree, the hashrate really skyrocketed the last couple of days. I definitely thought it would go back up but not like this..

It is becoming more mainstream, which adds to tons more people putting in mining contracts or small miners hoping to strike something. I feel as if the price remain in the low $300's that diff will go down. Now, if BTC value rises over $500's again, we should expect insane difficulty spikes again.

500 USD is expected to cross by the end of this financial year... at least once.

We can hope. I don't see a specific reason for that dramatic of a rise. The last time we saw that kind of spike was due to MtGox bot manipulating the market and creating false/unnatural valuations.
One legit reason I could see the market moving up so high would be the Winkle twins granted approval for their enterprise and Wall Street traders and hedge funds managers getting involved.