Downtosimple:
Dont understand your logic.
But miners already run at a loss.
The price is currently low because there is more selling than buying.
Sellers sell because they think price will go down in future, thats why they dont want to hold.
Gamblers who buy are thinking the price will go up in the future, as of now more people think price will go down rather than trend up.
How do we know miners are running at a loss while difficulty is up up and up? In my mind, the pure cost is only electricity, the others could be regarded as sunk cost. How much is the electricity, anybody knows here?
Also in my mind, leverage shorting is the main power driving prices down. Others could be negligible. Importantly, where does the shorting cover to close their shorts?
Incorrect. The true cost is capital investment and electricity cost. Where can you get asic equipment for free?
Anyway:
KNC Neptune roi .6 btc
Bitmain c1 roi .16 btc
Both running efficient .65-.7 watts GHS
I think most will agree electricity is between .10 ans .32 cents kwh so average is around .16
Leveraged shorting still needs capital to cover any leveraged losses. Either that or they can borrow the btc for free to sell it. But there is still a limit of how much they can short, they cannot short more btc than is available, and if there is alot of early adopters who are holding on im sure they can make them "not available" to borrow and short. Thus making the float even smaller.
You are right. The true cost is capital investment and electricity cost. But, when we are talking about a turning point of difficulty, things may be different. I suppose the day will come when miners will have to take electricity as pure cost whist others as sunk cost.
I guess shorting on exchange and covering off exchange is a cycling game running till now. If you have doubt in Btc supply for shorting, look at swap offers on bitfinex, supply is plenty. The true concern is how they can buy back to close shorts. If they do so on exchanges, this may drive prices even higher than shorting level. There, they can go to miners off exchange, who has plenty block chain rewards. That makes the cycling game, driving prices down and down.
The key thing is, when will supplies be drained out? on swap offer end or miner supply end? It seems to me, btc supplies from the miners end will be drained out first. AND we can track that by difficulty.
Anyway this is only my guess, being a hodler desperate for rallies. It may be totally wrong.