Mostly I'm guessing from the rather stagnated growth rate in the past week after the ASICs came online. Growth anyways that has been concave down as a result of ASICs in the past few weeks leading to the shift to concave down growth in the past week.
Since TLDR applied to you, I think you missed the point I was making regardless of how true the statement was. That is that people will sell off their bitcoins when they leave the network. Though I'm not sure if the absolute number of miners on the network is decreasing or not. People are leaving as it becomes difficult to mine but new people hear about bitcoins and I don't know which is more influencing on the number of people around. I think it would be cool if someone had info on that subject.
I follow you -- I disagree with your point, from my own experience:
In mid-2012 I was forced to move to a place where I could not readily set up my mining operation. I was not mining for a few months. I did NOT sell anything. (I did use some to pre-order with BFL...)
I'm hoping that I'm wrong anyways
and that there are more people like you. Myself I have significantly downsized my mining operation (selling off hardware) but I still hold >85% of my bitcoins that I've mined.
I feel like I'm indirectly making a point that the more bears there are around, the less n00bs will hear of bitcoin and get into it and inflate a bubble. I feel a smaller base of bitcoin believers is better than even a much larger base consisting of n00bs who will bring instability to prices and thus bitcoin reliability and its future.