It's highly unlikely that even pre-orders up to april are delivered within 2 months ... maybe up to december at the very best ??

My express shipping also got downgraded to standard , it seems to be accross the board , ridiculous ... is anyone's order still showing the express shipping without having to pay up insane amounts ?

Great article about this exact subject :

https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/

I had a similar concern with their bank details having changed. I sent a transfer April 10th and it finally appeared in bitstamp a few hours ago. Make sure you have put the transfer reference in the wire or it will take longer.

It's likely that >10% of the non technical users currently buying bitcoins because of the hype will lose them . I think one of the major challenges to a mass bitcoin adoption is that there's currently no safe / insured way for the non technical user to protect their wallet. The solution might come from serious online wallet providers legally backed by large capital or insurance contracts.

I have seen wide ranging estimates of this, and I think it's a very important question to study the bitcoin economy. A few public cases have been reported of large sums of bitcoin lost due to hardware malfunction, lost keys, etc . I assume a good chuck of the coins from the early days of mining have been lost. For instance when you look up the first 1000+ blocks a lot of the 50btc that were mined are still in the same addresses (most of them are different)  , I would assume these are lost ? unless you think they are  just dormant waiting on Satoshi to awaken hi master wallet ....

The issue I think is that BFL is currently seen as the only competitor being able to deliver ASIC devices on a massive scale (500th+). Even if they end up shipping within the next few months they have proven to be utterly incompetent at this task, and considering the recent surge in attention given to bitcoin the probability is rising that a way more serious/ larger chip manufacturer might start working on their own ASIC with a faster technology, either for their own use or for resale. Making an ASIC from from development to production would probably take a matter of weeks for a larger industrial player. Your jalapeno will probably end up becoming just a luxury coffee warmer (boiler ?) before you even receive it ....

If it's money you can afford to lose and you want to get in for the long run I would definitely enter now. The most likely outcome is that it will be worth either 0 (highest probability) or 100x+ more , 5 years from now.  People will tell you to wait for this level or that level based on technicals, etc ... truth is that volatility is way too high right now and opportunity cost is high, if you can get your coin <100 right now I would consider it a good long term deal .

I'm expecting the price on MtGox to go at least down to $50 , likely lower. Sell-offs are always sharper than rallies in this market , and the value of bitcoin is unfortunately way too dependant on the smooth operation of MtGox. As long as the exchanges are not back to running as normal you can expect sellers to outpower buyers by a large amount, it will probably take at least a couple more days.