Realistically, the price seems to have leveled out for now. It's roughly at mining cost; the mining forums indicate that running existing mining hardware is worthwhile, but buying new hardware is not.
Mining cost alone isn't enough to determine the price, but it does seem to have an effect.
Now that we've had a few weeks of reasonable stability, Bitcoin has more potential as a currency.
I know that the going trend is to state that mining has nothing to do with the price of bitcoins, however, I agree with you that I think mining cost has something to do with the price of bitcoins, probably more then most people think.
have you noticed that if you say anything on the forum about price of bitcoins and mining people will get all crazy like "Bitcoin price and mining has nothing to do with the price, you moron".
What you're describing is a "tangled hierarchy" and it is, in fact, the state of every economic system. Mining has an impact on bitcoin price and bitcoin price has an impact on mining. Many things have an impact on price, and many of those things are more substantial than mining activity - likewise price is not the only impact on mining, though price->mining is a stronger effect than mining-> price.
Among other things, miners produce some 7200 new coins per day - in times of low market movement the influx of new fiat moneys can be less than the face value of the 7200 new coins, and in such markets price tends to decline. This is just one of the many recognizable effects and it is admittedly a minor one that occurs only under limited circumstances.
Anyone who claims that they have the whole of the market "figured out" is either a fool or a liar. There are too many causes and effects and too many unknown ways in which the causes and effects interact, stack, tangle and loop back on themselves. The best we can do is look for indicators of mass market psychology and make educated guesses. Welcome to the wonderful world of economic theory
Well-said. It was so often repeated that price drives difficulty, "not the other way around". I've always argued that the relationship is "two-way causality". Note that since the crash from $30, difficulty hasn't dropped. To the contrary, difficulty is still growing slowly but steadily, and seems on target to rise to between 1.8 and 1.9 million for the next re-adjustment.
By saying two-way causality I mean that price drives difficulty, AND the other way around: difficulty drives price. To be precise, the evidence shows (see charts in my sig) that difficulty sets a bottom for the price. I don't think its coincidence that the price to difficulty ratio has only gone as low as about 0.75 (using a weighted average price), twice for the two bear markets of bitcoin's history. The first time was after price topped at $1.10 and fell from there, through March and early April. And the second time is now, which is where it has been since the crash from $30.
If the the price to difficulty ratio continues hovering between 0.75 and 1 (until the coming rally
), I think it makes for a pretty reliable economic indicator of the mass-market psychology of bitcoin.