unless it is full circle you can't look for a support there... only a place like SR really can say they keep it circulating at this stage (no forced taxes even)
i already gave the differences, smaller piles, many miners vs less miners bigger piles.. you have to look at technical analytics on exchanges about blasting through the bid like what happened last we fell to the 60's - if you dont understand it or believe it.. its ok. hedge or hedge not
As more and more business is done in BTC the less and less will need to be converted into USD. This isn't something that is going to happen overnight. This is something given enough time will happen if BTC is around for long enough that it will have it's own perceived value that is completely separate from its fiat value. I think that this is already happening and we are at the beginning stages of something awesome.
I don't agree that there will be less miners, how many group buy/mining pools are there outside of the two major exchanges? On BTCT and Bitfunder there must be a dozen at least. Utilizing the public funds/IPOs and also spreading those funds back to them via dividends and overall asset growth. This allows people who don't have thousands of dollars to spend on an ASIC to still participate in mining. Also how many USB Erupters has AM sold? How about all the other sub $500 mining projects everywhere: http://decentralizedhashing.com/bitcoin-mining-equipment-table/