Quote from: shmadz on September 03, 2015, 02:01:17 AM

Welcome back! Heh, yeah, 230 ain't bad. Much closer to equilibrium than say, 1000 or 100.

Speaking of equilibrium, I think cost of mining is still around 165 from my own experiential calculations.

If the price were truly too low, we should see it reflected in a falling hashrate. When the price is too high, the hashrate will increase until the expense of securing the Blockchain roughly equals the economic benefit.

Mmmm that maybe wasn't quite so clear, let me demonstrate with pictures...

As you can see, hashrate and price are somewhat correlated. You can see the stagnation in 2012, the big run up in 2013, and now in later 2014 and 2015, the price declines to seek equilibrium with cost. I expect the hashrate should stay relatively flat until some major change in the dynamic (reward halving, block size resolution, BIS confirming that bitcoin will replace the SDR)

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Is anyone out there capable of overlaying a time-equivalent price chart on top of that hashrate chart?

I think it might look interesting.

My personal impression is that hash rate is dictated by price and (more importantly?) technology, with rate reacting to price and not the inverse. The two big ramps were directly related to a paradigm shift in mining tech, CPU to GPU, and GPU to ASIC. With ASIC gear becoming increasingly efficient we will probably see a rise in hashrate even in the face of a flat or modestly declining price. The upcoming halving should be pretty interesting for those watching this relationship.