Just wondering if anyone has noticed a trend of longer block times when the price drops. I presume some proportion of miners become unprofitable. And that of those - some might need to convert to fiat in the short term to cover costs and so pause mining.
Block times can be longer than 10 minutes or shorter than 10 minutes, depends on network hash rate and blockchain difficulty. With same blockchain difficulty, if network hash rate drops, block times will increase and if with same blockchain difficulty, you have bigger network hashrate, block times will become shorter.
Price drops can or can not be enough to force Bitcoin miners to leave Mining industry. There tough time when market crashes and stays in low price range for a long time, that cause significant temporary losses on weak bitcoin miners. They will have to leave, turn off their ASICs or even sale off their ASICs too.
You can see times when Bitcoin miner capitulation happens in the past.
https://www.bitcoinmagazinepro.com/charts/hash-ribbons/