I think it's safe to say that miners control the market price to a large extent as they control the supply of Bitcoin. According to my rough calculations, the cost of mining new coins must be getting very close to the actual market price of Bitcoin. Yet the hash rate keeps growing at a linear rate every day (as fast as new hardware is manufactured). Obviously miners won't sell BTC for less than it costs to mine, so you'd have to assume the price will reach an equilibrium or go up - or it could come crashing down, miners will go bankrupt and it's the end of Bitcoin (I really don't see that scenario happening).
The confidence from the 3 largest mining pools expanding and spending literally millions each day on new hardware gives me confidence that there's something bigger going on.
Anything can happen, but if Bitcoin keeps dropping, I think it'll be short-lived.
My calculations to mine 1 Bitcoin are below. I believe they are very generous numbers and I think the cost would be well above $5k on average in the real world.
-----ELECTRICITY COST-----
Current Bitcoin hash rate 43,161,058 TH/s
Most efficient miner (Bitmain Antminer S9) which does 13-14 TH/s using 1.3kW
Below is an extremely generous calculation for the number of miners in the world. Obviously there would be more as there are less efficient miners being used also.
43,161,058 ÷ 13 = 3,320,081
Cost of electricity in China 4 cents kW (good comparison as most the mining is done in China and they have some of the cheapest electricity in the world)
Cost of electricity used each hour. Again, extremely generous
3,320,081 x 1.3kW = 4,316,105.3 kW per hour
4,316,105.3 x 4 cents = $172,644
Cost to create 1 Bitcoin (excluding hardware cost)
$172,644 ÷ 75 (amount of Bitcoin generated per an hour) = $2,302
-----HARDWARE COST-----
Let’s say the average life of a miner is 2 years before it breaks or becomes redundant due to more efficient miners becoming available.
3,320,081 x $1,000 (assuming the big miners can get s9's at half price) = $3,320,081,000 Cost of all the mining hardware in the world
24 x 365 x 2 = 17,520 hours in two years
$3,320,081,000 ÷ 17,520 = $189,502
Cost per an hour to replace broken/redundant miners
$189,502 ÷ 75 = $2,526 cost of hardware replacement per Bitcoin
Actual cost per a Bitcoin $2,302 (electricity) + $2,526 (hardware) = $4,828
You could also add cost of rent and a bunch of other costs.
Sources:
https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=2years
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-bitcoin-miner/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing…
https://blockchain.info/pools