We're currently heading in a direction where mining is becoming very profitable again.   When bitcoin goes up, so does mining, and so does the difficulty factor.

The problem I'm seeing is that demand has HUGE growth potential, but production does not (due to hardware availability).   We're already seeing shortages in some of the most favored GPUs.   What happens when the price doubles again and production tries to scale to match?   Will we start seeing huge markups on ATI GPUs?

I think we're within a few months of creating a global video card shortage.   This will be interesting...

I see a lot of people diminishing the role of miners in the economy, but right now mining is critical.

Bitcoins can't continue to grow in value too far beyond the cost of mining the coins.  Who in their right mind would pay $100 per bitcoin right now when you could mine it at a cost of $1 per bitcoin?

But, if the value of bitcoin doesn't grow significantly then there isn't enough liquidity in the system for many of the potential uses.

A total value of $60M is a pittance.   By comparison the total value of all gold mined is around $5 trillion.

Having more miners is every bit as important as having more merchants accepting bitcoin; they're both necessary to keep things moving forward.