They are not, they are part of a SHA512 mining eco-system. For example, were the scrypt miners part of the Litecoin eco-system? or Dogecoin eco-system?

As shown by the scrypt mining scene, the miners only care about profits (or we could call it extracting value out of an eco-system), the most popular pools are the "auto-switch" pools, they will mine ANY coin that is profitable.

Due to the lack of viable SHA512 altcoins (ironically, this is due to PoW mining being so insecure, any SHA512 altcoin is easily attacked by the massive amount of ASIC available), the SHA512 miners mostly mine Bitcoin, but that does NOT make them part of the Bitcoin eco-system. They will switch to ANY profitable SHA512 eco-system, as long as they could extract value out of it. If mining Peercoin was more profitable than Bitcoin today, you can be pretty sure majority of miners will switch to mining peercoin.

This is a very well known figure from previous discussions here:
https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/770591.msg8690432#msg8690432

It's basically a function of Bitcoin marketcap, the PoW mining expense is roughly maintained at 10% Bitcoin marketcap at annualized rate. This is why I call it charging Bitcoin holders a 10% tax

No mining incentive; no miners; no network security; no bitcoin.

OP doesn't understand how this technology works.

No, you don't understand there are superior functioning alternatives available.

the large mining pools do not throw coins onto the crappy PHP exchanges, instead they trade privately..

please please please open your eyes people..

the exchange price is controlled by bots with small amounts of bitcoins and then a large wall of maybe 200 coins (much like the willy bot of 2013)

dont blame miners for the price drop. blame sheeple that follow exchanges thinking that its the ultimate price verifier. these exchanges volumes are crap in comparision to bitcoins in circulation. and the amount of day trading vs people actually cashing out to fiat via exchanges is even smaller.

PoW actually helps prices. because as it gets more expensive to create a bitcoin, those that do have costs, wont sell for a loss. they will create resistance points and raise prices with walls and create demand by not selling cheap.

POS puts bitcoins into the hands of those with very low costs, thus they are instantly profiting and would be more tempted to sell at any price.

 

This argument has been debunked numerous times, I can't believe there are people still using it. There are many PoS eco-systems, just look at coinmarketcap.com. They have ZERO PoW, how come they have millions of dollars in value in their eco-system?

Bitcoin's value does NOT derive from useless PoW mining, that's ridiculous. If your theory were true, then if I create any altcoin, and put massive amount of ASIC mining it, then it should also have a matching value?

Saying Bitcoin purely derive value from useless PoW mining, is an insult to Satoshi Nakamoto, the developers that contributed to Bitcoin, and the Bitcoin community.

Unless I am missing something (please explain if I am), that post does not support your $500 million figure. It's a rather long thread to read, do you have a link for a post that supports your figure?

Nevertheless, mining community is part of the cryptocurrency community, every dollar they invested in equipment purchasing or electricity power is a dollar invested in cryptocurrency ecosystem. Bitcoin happens to be the biggest part of this ecosystem.

Whether the miners eventually  "cash out" by selling the mined coins is a different issue, because same argument can be made to speculators and hodlers.

Now a days getting 500 is quite hard then 5000 looks like a dream.