> Third, the futures markets have changed the game, enabling miners to estimate their mining losses and profits at the outset — if you can buy in a futures market at a price below my mining costs, why mine for a sure loss?
Real world is always more complex than this.
My expectation would be that done miners will contribute to mine at below profit levels because they seek to cut their losses.
If they have cheap electricity but large sunk costs due to expensive hardware, that's not paid off, then - absent other uses for the hardware - they'd seek to reduce the loss?
So mining wouldn't stop, but it would drop off precipitously.
Luckily this wouldn't be one huge even but dragged out over a large price range since electricity prices vary considerably depending on location and source. This ensures that there is enough time for difficulty adjustments to kick in and correct the market.