Quote from: An amorous cow-herder on September 21, 2014, 11:33:52 AM

Quote from: morprint on September 21, 2014, 11:06:00 AM

That is my point - Miners go out of business because it is not profitable, this means less supply on market which means price should rise - miners get back in. Therefore until all the coins are mined the price will/should depend to some degree on miners.

If it is no longer profitable to mine then the total supply of coins will remain at 13mil. The bottom price of Bitcoin should really be above the price of production.

You got a fundamental misunderstanding there. This isnt the "real world" where one shuts down a mine a production halts.
It doesnt matter how many people mine or what the difficulty is. The network adjusts difficulty according to hash-rate. The block rewards are given out, on average, every ten minutes. Its constant even if miners drop out. (Well, to be excactly precise, during stages of increasing hash rates the block creation times are slightly faster and slightly slower during decreasing rates. But once that drop, no matter how large, has been adjusted for the normal 10 minute payouts resume).

Hmm, I think you have to mine few blocks before difficulty adjust. How long does it take mine next block on 2 laptops ? (but I'm not sure)