BTW, the price of BTC is currently below the mining cost for a majority of miners if you include the price of equipment as well.
If it stays this way, network will crash hard (hashing will decline ~50%) soon.
Non sequitur. The equipment costs will not come into play the way you suggest. No one is going to let mining rigs sit idle unless the cost of electricity (plus whatever other maintenance costs exist) is greater than the yield in bitcoin. The high purchase price of equipment would mean they won't be buying any more. But it would not make them turn off what they already have.
True re equipment costs as the only cause, but if no new equipment is deployed, but old equipment is decommissioned, then the network speed WILL decrease.
here is the first mining "bearwhale" for you, but there will be more
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=813649.0There are at least two self-correcting mechanisms that will kick in to support the network speed. The question is not whether they will kick in, but when. We should not be alarmed when we see them kick in, because these mechanisms are part of the design.
1. Every decrease in hash power makes all the rest of the mining rigs more profitable.
2. If network speed becomes a problem, then users of the network will be willing to pay more in mining fees.