And those "obvious" reasons are what?
I believe this has everything to do with sentiment, that is how prices of crypto currencies are established, supply and demand. The demand has gone down over the past 6 months and you can't deny it as the supply stays the same.. that is the point of difficulty.
Supply hasn't stayed the same.
You currently have over 30% of the entire network hashrate accounted for by just FIVE wallet addresses (solo miners). Over on Coinotron there are two miners with over 6 GH/s in hashrate each, and the next two on the list each have over 3 GH/s.
Supply stays more or less the same no matter who has control of the hash power or how many hashes they throw at it. That is the whole purpose of adjusting difficulty. To debate this point is dumb, just go look at the block frequency chart:
http://cryptometer.org/litecoin_60_month_charts.htmlWhat you mean to say is that the supply is more
centralized towards big players with deep pockets and/or hardware manufacturers than it used to be.
That has concentrated an abnormally gigantic amount of the block rewards into a very few hands and they are all making a mad dash toward ROI, before the even larger hardware starts shipping this month and next, reducing their percentage of the network to a fraction of what it is today.
You don't like me making inferences, so why are you allowed to make them? Do you know these large miners personally? How can you be sure it is them that are selling Litecoins and not someone that already owned Litecoins who has recently changed their mind about it?
But it is an abnormal condition for so few miners to have so much of the new coin production...and it won't remain the case as the network is taken over by ASICs and the hashrate redistributes to something approximating normal.
We'll agree to disagree on that one, ASICs brings centralization. Why would people buy mining equipment if it won't break even due to people with deep pockets and/or the mark up from mining hardware manufacturers? The idea that it's going to magically fix itself over time doesn't make sense to me. If it doesn't make sense to buy mining hardware (in terms of profit), then what is the point? There are very few people that mine just "to protect the network".
This isn't even as centralized as I am expecting Bitcoin/Litecoin to become. It will get much worse as old money, old money crypto, bankers, and VCs go full throttle on the mining landscape. Due to economies of scale, massive institutions with deep pockets can make a lot of mining hardware much cheaper than what the average miner can buy them for at retail prices.
The only other coin to have ever gone through this transition is Bitcoin...and it did it at a time when there were a LOT fewer eyes on it and a whole hell of a lot less money involved.
That is not true. Litecoin is at about a $252 million market cap right now.. I wouldn't exactly say that's "a whole hell of a lot less money" compared to Bitcoin's Feb 2013 market cap of $228 million. Look at February 2013 forward:
http://www.quandl.com/BCHAIN/MKTCP-Bitcoin-Market-CapitalizationThe arrival of Bitcoin ASICs also made it more centralized, but they did not see a similar dip in price. Go from February 2013 forward:
http://www.quandl.com/BAVERAGE/USD-USD-BITCOIN-Weighted-PriceI agree that there are more people around now than in Feb. 2013, but I'm not sure how this makes a difference in the topic at hand. More people are around to buy Litecoin and Litecoin mining hardware, yet the price is falling and the network is becoming more centralized. How does that support your argument?
Realistically, no other coin in existence could hold up under these conditions...but Litecoin has not failed. It has lost some ground in price denominated in dollars, but not nearly as much as one would expect, considering the rampant dumping.
It has also lost some ground denominated in Bitcoins. You are also making an assumption that no other coin could hold up, as it hasn't happened yet so know one knows what would happen. Again you assume all the dumping is ASIC miners... I think I heard Smoothie himself say he didn't currently have a stake in Litecoin... this is another large assumption as well that it is only ASIC miners dumping. I think personally it is both ASIC miners dumping and market sentiment is shifting. I'd like to state again, Bitcoin's price didn't slip when their ASICs came out, why should Litecoin be given a free pass as to this being the reason for the price falling?
