Quote from: strictlyfocused on September 09, 2011, 03:49:49 PM

Quote from: lemonginger

No. The difficulty adjustment will ensure that some miners can make a profit at nearly any price. Lower prices drive miners out, difficulty ramps down, mining becomes profitable for miners remaining, more miners jump in, difficulty rises, mining becomes unprofitable, miners leave. It's a balancing feedback loop that is always in play, it makes no difference what the price is. I have no frigging clue why after a year of this we still have people insisting that the "cost of mining" somehow affects the price of bitcoins.

Yeah it may not be profitable at the moment, but assuming the price rebounds I will have mined during these "off-periods" and will end up with more BTC in my wallet when their value goes back up. "Fair-weather" miners will shut down their systems because BTC is not profitable RIGHT NOW and will have less BTC to show for it.

That logic is flawed. If power cost is higher than the value of the BTC produced, it's simply more profitable to just buy BTC instead of mining them.