As the level of difficulty increased for both BTC and LTC, but the BTC level of difficulty are much higher than the LTC, if we do the math, now a day mining BTC doesn’t appear to be as profitable than before although the BTC price has risen dramatically, sky rocketed to be exactly, yesterday it almost hit $150 (USD).
Still a lot of speculation on how long will these types of crypto currency will stay alive as people are saying the government could shut it down soon, it is indeed scary. Imagine if we put in time and effort and off course money to invest in the hardware to mine and monthly electricity bill and we don’t yield any profit, it will be a terrible loss.
For myself, I had spent over $3000 for my rig doing BTC mining. I just started about a week ago and got 2BTC so far. I first started with just one Radeon 7970 and that doesn’t make much, then with two then now 6 Radeon 7970 but never overclock or doing any tweak, just straight stock default configuration using guiminer 🙂 when I get a chance I think I will look into overclock but probably not, I want to be able to re-sell thsese GPU just in case Bitcoin crashed or those ASIC came out and GPU miner no longer profitable. Anyhow those 2BTC I have value at $300 (USD) now at this moment 🙂
Now if we take  a calculator or should I say those existing calculator that can estimate how much money you can earn mining BTC or LTC, these calculator is not 100% accurate but accurate enough to give you an idea which one are more profitable. Let say I mine at the rate of 3300 MH/s for BTC, and if I were to mine LTC it would be about 3300 KH/s, and if I plug in these # into the calculator and sure enough mining LTC yield more profitable. However I have not try to cash any BTC yet, I don’t know the exact process but appears to be cumbersome, the process is long, move your BTC to a brokerage firm such as mtGOX, then sell it to USD, then move that USD to some merchant that except BTC to USD money paypal might be able to accept with verification of your identity from mtGOX. Although there are merchant out there that will accept and transfer your money to bank, but there are associate charges, such as wiretransfer a whopping $45, or Western union.
Bottom line, as of now today this moment as we speak, LTC mining is more profitable! do LTC mining now before it’s too late. Why too late? because as those ASIC system came out and GPU miner start to drop off the network, guess where they’re going? some will sell their GPU to buy ASIC system, and most will turn to mining LTC and this will have big impact to LTC level of difficulty, it will increase dramatically. So better to mine LTC today.
This Friday I will be getting my shipments of 3x 7870 GPU and I will set it up to  mine LTC to confirm.