"-Miners typically need to sell their coin immediately as they have invested in equipment that expects a return"
Can someone please clarify for me, in layman's terms, how the investment a miner makes to acquire a coin is any more at risk than the investment a trader makes to acquire a coin? Once the coin is in your wallet, the relative return on that coin, once sold, is identical for both cases isn't it?
Miner: Spent $10 on equipment costs, $90 on power and cooling, received one Bitcoin worth $100
Speculator: Spent $90 on some exchange, $10 on fees, received one Bitcoin worth $100
Why are these two individuals in any different situation once they have turned their non-coin assets into coin? Up until the moment the coin landed in their wallet, their pre-coin assets could have performed wildly different to each other. But once they have been converted to coin, they perform the same? Or am I making the mistake of thinking miners do not see themselves as speculators but as something like 'manufacturers' and are thus not using disposable risk capital to set up their operations?
The miner would likely have spent a lot more then $10 in your scenario in buying their miner, but this is not the point.
The miner likely did not plan on investing in bitcoin via the electric company when they purchased their miner. They were likely hoping that the difficulty would rise at a slow enough pace such that they would be able to mine more bitcoin then the miner would cost plus the cost of electricity.
Also a trader would generally only purchase bitcoin on a one time basis, while the miner would be contentiously be buying bitcoin via the electric company. If they already had as much bitcoin as they needed/wanted then they would still need to purchase additional bitcoin because if they do not they would lose out on part of their investment as miners are a deprecating asset.