But hashrate will have some effect on future price.
It is in the interests of miners to have higher coin prices. Miners are not just black boxes, they are also people, enough people can and will influence a market price through different means. For example spreading optimism about bitcoin,
Haha yes, but the paraphrase is true only if one thinks Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme.
The bad part about ponzi schemes is that there is no utility behind them, this makes their worth only proportional to their market growth and failure is inevitable because of this.
Bitcoin does offer quite the utility, it having solved the problem of a distributed trustless transaction system. It works well, sure it's a little raw at the moment, in the end users won't be seeing key strings etc. (unless they want to).
The irony is that Bitcoins nemesis: fiat and fractional banking IS a ponzi scheme as "new" money is created at a rate of 10:1 on new debts that are taken out by users Talk about untennable and destined to fail
Well there is a good side to that. If the number of USD in circulation rises exponentially, the exchange rate of FIAT/BTC will also rise exponentially and nothing can stop it. BTC in that sence is a good hedge vs retarded central bankers.