For the millionth time in these forums. The price of BTC has absolutely nothing to do with the price of mining. The difficulty will adjust towards making mining a break-even venture. The difficulty rate lags the price due to the time it takes to bring miners on and offline. The price is solely determined by supply and demand.
poppycock.
Just keep repeating it to yourself over and over until you believe it.
Miners are the primary suppliers of bitcoins for sale at sane prices. The vast majority of miners sell some large percentage of mined coins to cover electric and hardware costs. Whatever's left they speculate with...
The degree of speculation of any subset of miners is up for debate, it can be as simple as holding until the price reaches some point or as complicated as day trading.
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Speculators probably actually control more bitcoin that miners... but they generally aren't placing market orders like most miners are.
What he meant was that the prices can go way lower than the production cost, in which case miners might simply stop mining.
It is not like the prices on the market are hardcoded just because it is the cost of production, that's a fallacy.
The $50 a bitcoin is a pretty tough resistance, but if it breaks through it, mining might not be an economical venture for many.
Some might choose stopping the mining altogether until the price recovers, and some others might think that it is just temporary and simply keep generating bitcoins at a short term loss believing that the prices will rise again in the future and recoup their losses then.
In either case, the bitcoin market price is not tied up to the cost of production.