Mining means nothing in regards to influencing the price.
hashrate follows price
sorry gentlemen, but this cannot be true
mining most certainly does influence price in the most foundational way: with zero hashrate, there is no network, and hence Bitcoin is meaningless (and hence worthless). That means that every additional hash per second is at a minimum serving as ballast against a hashrate of zero.
and this is without paying regard to the fact that the hashrate provides protection against several different attacks, and that the amount of protection is commensurate with the hashrate (i.e. Bitcoin is increasingly safer from these attacks the more the hashrate increases).
One cannot directly correlate the effect of changes in the network hashrate with changes in the market price, but if we fail to recognize that hashrate is a (literally) vital part of what makes up Bitcoin's value proposition (and price
is a measure of Bitcoin's value), that would constitute a fatal misunderstanding Bitcoin's market dynamics.
I fully agree there.
We can't know the extent that miners respond to price changes, nor can we know the extent that users or investors respond to hash rate changes. With that in mind, I consider it a wash.
The only thing I'd be concerned about is a fast and substantial drop in hash rate, to a degree where it would harm network usage. I assume that would accompany a substantial price drop as well. It doesn't really matter which caused which.