For me, yet another confirmation that price is going up.
Not sure why you would think that more hashing occurring might lead to the exchange rate rising. That isn't an uncommon belief among miners, I just don't know the reason why. The data points to mining activity only lagging the exchange rate moves.
For the most part, price has been the main driver and the lead indicator. But there were a couple of occasions when hash rate led the price.
The first was when difficulty was rising before bitcoin had a price, before there was an exchange.
The second was between March and April 2011. Price topped at $1.10 and then fell to ~$0.60. Hash rate fell and difficulty re-adjusted downwards for the first time after price topped. But if you look closely, hash rate started rising
before price bounced upwards from $0.60 (see charts in my sig).
Chicken-and-egg arguments can never be definitively settled. But even as a lagging indicator, difficulty should confirm the price trend.
Since the bottom at $2, and through the correction from $7.2, the rising difficulty is strongly confirming an upward trend.