Yah, i've been trying to get a full year long chart of mining stats but I would throw a guess that summer lowers the processing power and increases the amount of lost share and blocks due to crashing and heat issues. I just have two cards and they alone bring up the heat in my room ten fold.

Much like the government keeps USD at near 0 rate level, bitcoin exchange markets should do the same. I was reading another post, but a real good change for bitcoin will be if the US defaults on their debt. People are running for safer currencys and if the US does ( I doubt it will) I would rack up the fee's when people start running for higher ground. But that is just me, I know currencys pretty well but I'm new to bitcoin and I'm just absorbing ^^

-Iyeman: But how many people will get turned off by that diffculty?