The price crash has more to do with a general market decline (25% over past week), which has happened to coincide with XMR's dump off after Mintpal.
Yeah, global volume and price decreases seem to be bringing out the worst in the local coin communities by pointing fingers at each other. For a movement like this I'd look toward things like people speculating a cyclical repetition of last years bitcoin climb .. in that this this is a calm before the storm period .. so people are starting to accumulate BTC rather than alts right now. I'd see it more as a traffic - congestion on a highway scenario .. where we will have a couple of low-volume spells before the wave hits .. if its gonna. Just my speculation though.
Then there's other realizations popping up -- like 'oh wow this 2 month old protocol is more profitable than what's been here for the last few years -- maybe something's seriously up', or the seemingly positive btc auction, or we're catching some blowback after the most recent 'whitepaper-pump, fancy looking wallet-pump, and anon-pump' crazes all being rolled into one long month long pump fest. Usually it's just one thing that people focus on .. but last month it was three. I believe the delirium has subsided for now, which will give people a much needed chance to catch their bearings or acquire a couple paychecks before it happens all over again .. if it's gonna.
In any case, I doubt anyone has started mining XMR because of my post as I've received zero PM's suggesting that. It's not the simplest coin to mine and poster above makes a good point with the 5% fee.
You'd be very surprised at how little information is needed for people to latch onto. I can guarantee good analysis and graphical information as you've provided has gone further than you think. For example, this thread has 1065 views. That's about the number of people on poloniex right now. Lots of people here are quiet, and I think I just had a post in Spoetniks most recent thread about whether or not anyone thinks 330k unique accounts makes sense. I made the point that I wouldn't be surprised if only 10% of them are unique, based on the who.is data alone. Keep in mind that that data doesn't discriminate who logs in and who doesn't (I think) .. just the number of people that check out the page. My point is that there's a lot of lurkers here, who never post and never say anything .. probably more than anyone's realizing.
Makes me wonder how there can be so little competition among miners that anyone can get away with such a high fee - but the answer is that it will probably not last much longer for him as something better is developed.
It was weird to see the whole open-source bottom just drop out over the last couple months. There's a closed source coin coming, publicly available closed source miners. The field is changing, and I think it has a lot to do with 3rd party support for these currencies claiming some kind of profit. The worlds much more capable of supporting these coins in 2014 .. and I would expect that trend to continue to the point where they have the capability to be equal in necessity to core developers themselves. Only, it's hard to guarantee payment for third parties through a premine .. so what options do they have really?
Ultimately what's most important in raising the value, and also my goal, is to simply spread awareness and demand about a coin I believe in. In the meantime, small time miners a higher profit (if they want to dump) makes me happy, and we both benefit is the community grows. Not sure what's wrong with that. I have no intentions of dumping this coin and believe strongly it will multiply in value this year and continue to grow, as long as development continues and no bad event takes place.
I agree, actually I think one of the best marketing hooks is to get people into this by pointing out that it's profitable. Then, if it ever becomes unprofitable or they decide the margin is too large, they can make their own decisions. It's times like these, when it's not pumping and the value isn't increasing drastically that would ultimately keep people as part of the community though (even if they decide to not mine). Slow times give people a chance to realize what else is around besides that big bucket of money everyone's after .. especially getting to know the other people in the community.
Hopefully I save a miner from wasting energy on the scamcoins out there (veilcoin etc)
If we could only all be so lucky as to not feel compelled to waste a hash on a scam!
