Most of GPU miners didn't want ROI as soon as possible, as I explained earlier - they counted on reselling their GPUs, and they were mostly hobbyist. But I'm a miner myself, I know a lot of miners, I've seen in first person who are the customers of companies like KnC and how much they are spending, and you have to understand that this last media bubble exposed Bitcoin to a lot of new and uneducated people who run profit calculators at current difficulty (without having their miners yet), they do not even understand that difficulty is growing exponentially, and at the end of the day there is a "gold rush" in which a lot of new people is entering mining because they think they will get rich quick... So we have now a) a lot of individuals investing money they cannot afford to lose on BTC miners, and as you surely know there is a "get-rich-quick" feeling on BTC - they think they will recoup their investment FAST, and this is why they are putting in this game more money they should; b) there are more and more "professional" miners that are investing money in mining with the only intention of generating profit - they will run their operations as a business. That people has to pay for huge electricity costs, renting of industrial places where they will host their operations, etc. etc. etc. A lot of fiat expenses to cover.

During the GPU era, I rarely saw a) and b) miners, most were small-time hobbyist, running their rigs in their bedrooms. During this change to ASIC, I'm seeing a lot of both a) and b). This people needs to recoup fiat ASAP.

It's obvious that price is not driven by difficulty, but inflation does have an impact on price - at this stage inflation in BTC its non negligible, and its in fact built into the system to pay for the work and costs of mining during the early days of Bitcoin. Thus, looking at growing difficulty and expecting growing price is a fallacy (in fact its the other way around) - but nevertheless Bitcoin is currently inflating at a 12.5% yearly rate, and what miners do with those newly minted coints has inevitably an impact on price.

I believe that there will be lots of newly minted coins hitting the exchanges in late 2013, will just wait and see.

EDIT: in fewer words, wether miners decide to speculate (holding) or to pay for their fiat costs (selling the coins for good) has inevitably an immediate impact on price.

This is the problem. Where did the get the money for all this shit. Asicminer can't sell, as they would crash the price and nobody would buy asicminer...they must first sell their stuff and then they can sell bitcoins. The prices in bitcoins seem high, as they know they can't sell 100k bitcoins at market price.

there's no way shareholders will dump but btc's still gonna move violently on any news so people can profit short term.

Mtgox and/or Bitpay might be gone, SR still kickin but lots of competition from alts and technical problems.
I expect the Bitcoin community to be composed of Internet Libertarians for the entirety of the Project. It will be all about "spreading the word" still.

SR has one problem right now: It's not really possible to order anonymously when all exchanges require verification, tricks like mixing and choosing the transaction output address don't really help. (Courts can get a warrant for transaction data off the exchanges)
The only real solution is zerocoin which, quite frankly would be better off being implemented in an altcoin.
I don't expect SR to go under because of this, the money flow just has to come from OTC and similar mechanisms.

Difference between stamp and gox 20$. Something happened?

Check my posts. I was one of the few screaming BUY BUY BUY last summer.

Good idea. My life has been so much better since I started using Holdbot. I check on it periodically to make sure it's doing what it's supposed to, and it's still never moved a single coin from my wallet to the exchange.

Am I losing my grip on reality or did I just see a goat with an axe kill everyone at a backyard BBQ?