Obsessed by this topic today but did some digging around (pardon the pun) regarding gold price and extraction costs...

http://www.moneyweek.com/blog/what-is-gold-really-worth-00301

It would seem that extraction costs of Gold are about $600/oz. So within an order of magnitude and not far from the previously relatively stable gold price.

So the question is... what's stopping me from going and buying myself a piece of this money farm? We'll I'm guessing the actual cost of extraction for a new entrant would be close to the current gold price or why would the current owner sell their mining land, equipment and knowledge to a new entrant? Seems to me that mining difficulty proably hasn't changed that much in the last few years and therefore it must be the dollar losing value.

Interesting. It suggest that the BTC price probably wouldn't be too far from the cost of mining it and thus the major factor in the mining cost will drive the price. At the moment, the BTC mining cost is the labour, knowledge attainment and opportunity costs.