Looks like BTC hit bottom to me. Fluctuated in low $200's for several weeks and is now steadily up across the board on multiple sites. I see it getting pumped up over the course of the Spring and Summer. Pure conjecture of course because I thought it would go back up last year, but all the shady sites and the fact that cryptocurrency is just an experiment kept people scared of buying back in. I think due to it's now widespread acceptance and the government's lack of interest in hard regulation of it we should see something again.
ASIC mining with free electricity looks like the only way to go. If paying for electricity you will only break even or make an extremely thin profit. There are some solid 1+TH SHA256 miners going for cheap on Ebay ($200 - $400). Right now, without counting electricity costs you can get about $1 a day per 325GH for BTC mining @ current USD value. I'm not seeing a lot of ASIC Scrypt miners available so I'm assuming that Scrypt altcoins would still be the best.