IMO a bear market is the best time to mine if you own the equipment outright and can afford to pay your electricity bill without selling for fiat. This is especially true if you paid retail or lower for your gear. Oddly enough it seems like values have appreciated compared to pricing pre-chinese tariff.
You are right but the reason why a bear market is a good time to start mining is low mining difficulty, if no miners are leaving the network it will make no sense, look at the situation right now, we are in bear market but not as dip as that of 2018 where people are switching of their rigs, mining difficulty is still very high still.
Because miners are not in a bear market. Yeah maybe 20cent power miners are in trouble but not 10 cent power
Lets take my best rig it does 1030 mhs that is 1030 x 0.0237 = $24.41 pre power it burns 50 kwatts a day
so
$24.41 - 2.50 = 21.91 daily profit for a 5 cent miner-------- my farm
$24.41 - 5.00 = 19.41 daily profit for a 10 cent miner
$24.41 - 7.50 = 16.91 daily profit for a 15 cent miner-------- my garage
$24.41 - 10.00 = 14.41 daily profit for a 20 cent miner
$24.41 - 12.50 = 11.91 daily profit for a 25 cent miner
so we simply are not a bear mining market
anyone with over 25 cent power was more a fool than a miner.
I would argue you won't see any hash drop unless 10 cent miners are losers as that kock out home mining in a lot of spots.