if you think about it, the hashrate it the real measure about the real trend of the value of bitcoin
i mean the hashrate paints perfectly the average increase of the value since bitcoin is born, without all the p&d that occured
Totally - the network expands to absorb all potential mining rewards in real-world terms. When I first started looking at the mining network a couple of years ago I was struck by the correlation, but it wasn't until a few months later I worked out why. I should probably re-visit that original article, but it pretty-accurately captured the slowdown in hash rate growth that happened in later 2014 and 2015:
http://hashingit.com/analysis/24-megawatts-of-miningLately I've also been publishing the source code for the simulations so I'll do the same when I get chance to update this one.