Some people think that the subsequent reduction in supply will drive up the price. I don't really buy that. There's already enough coins out there to meet demand and of the coins traded every day, the volume is multiple times more than the mined coins arriving. If demand rose significantly then it might be a factor but outside sentiment, which is more important than anything so it does count, I don't think there's any other reason for it to rise.
I understand the supply and demand thing. So what you mean is that the price increase after the halving does not have a solid proof that it will really increase at all?
No certainties. Pretty simple, I must say: if demand stays the same or increase, value will increase; if demand decrease and supply decrease, price will go down. Also in the second scenario, miners that won't profit in these terms would likely leave the scene for a while or leave completely.
I am very wary of halvings, as I have seen the negative effects of halvings in many other coins before. Bitcoin is too small compared to the general economy to work completely like a commodity: halving reduces the excitement brought by mining - this reduced excitement could have a negative impact on price.
I'm not so sure if this really will necessarily reduce the "excitement" of mining for miners, but it will hurt them for sure. But that's not to say that they will necessarily stop; they just might start to look elsewhere to move mining farms for cheaper electricity costs, or better ways to improve consumption of energy, like investing in solar energy for example.
But all in all though, there is just simply too much money invested by mining farms for them to just completely stop in general. I know the basic economics of how a business is maintained and run, and once you go below a certain threshold of incoming currency where the business is steadily losing money, then it's not sustainable any more and the business will have to close... but when a "normal" business closes, they will sell off property, assets, and other things to make money back. It will be hard for miners to find people to buy a fuck ton of ASIC's and other mining hardware, or at least, I would think so at least... maybe if they sell it at a ridiculously low price.
The excitement factor I mention is meant towards the casual home miners. Nowadays it takes 1000 watts to mine some BTC dust - now with the
halving this means they will get half of the dust they mined before. Hardly something to entice new casual miners to join in the fun... right now its a losing proposition.
Large operations and small miners alike, are confronted to a decision to make in light of stubbornly low Bitcoin price of 2015. If miners do not make money, people won't buy mining equipment - and solar power requires a huge infrastructure investment that can't really be recouped at today's BTC price.
It is already very visible that new mining technology development has slowed down quite a bit! What will happen, really boils down to the evolution of the price of BTC...
