Just wanted to see what people think about this question.

I'm guessing that with the recent difficulty increase with some ASICs shipping in Avalon's batch 2 that a larger than average amount of miners left the bitcoin mining network (very likely true). As a result, I think this has led a larger than average amount of bitcoin holders (those that just left mining) to sell off their bitcoins and drive down the price somewhat (plausable cause). There doesn't seem to be a night and day reason for people leaving to sell off their bitcoins other than possibly ex-miners just want to get out of the picture altogether and just sell their bitcoins.

This would seem to propose a particular correlation between the difficulty rating and the price of bitcoins. Specifically I would even say that the rate of change of the difficulty rating (acceleration/decelation) of the network hashrate influences the price of bitcoins in the short term before an adjusted equilibrium is reached between old prices and semi-panic prices.

I'm guessing that with each big increase of the network hashrate due to a new chunk of newly shipped ASICs coming online in the future that the price of bitcoins will drop in the short term when ex-miners dump bitcoins. I know that a significant number of ex-miners will still hold on to bitcoins for investment if that was their overall plan but I'm speculating about the majority of ex-miners who left in a larger than average volume.

Also, a second but semi-related question of mine is what kind of long term effect will this have on bitcoin prices as the total number of people that holds bitcoins falls? I feel bitcoin holds strength in the future if there is a larger userbase so I can't see this scenario meaning anything but a hindrance to the future of bitcoin (something that I think we can all agree on).

I don't want to sound like a bear here as I really want bitcoin to be successful in the long run. I do think though that if more people are aware and discuss the challenges facing bitcoins then this will lead to a more stable bitcoin price future. One that is fueled more by the useful value of bitcoin rather than a future where price is dictated more so by uninformed knee-jerk reaction (like selling bitcoins just to leave the seen altogether mentioned above).

Discuss (Flamers welcome???) as I believe awareness will help bitcoins long term future.