Ok I read it just now. Let's see if some dev explains the situation. I hope so.

Does anybody know why the price was going down?

Impatient people settling for far less than what Shield is worth. They will regret dumping their coins so early when Shield makes it to a dollar.

There is no exact specific date for that implementation yet but the roadmap says Q2 in 2018.  Whether that means April or June will probably be clarified as time goes on, and other Q1 roadmap goals are met first.

What will happen after the hard fork?  Will we have to change out our coins we've mined so far?

Good job on the Electrum wallet working right now, it doesn't confirm the transactions yet so all coins show up as unverified but at least it's working again, looking forward to friday to get my hands on the Windows QT wallet

Mines disconnected too, i wouldnt worry, qt wallet will be with us in a few days, funds are safe and exchanges are doing well, just wait for the weeds to lose all there coins, price will rise much faster once the weeds coins have been hodled by an investor.

Why friday? I have the windows QT wallet since 10 days and it's working fine..

Any idea how many coins we will need for a masternode?  Hopefully not too crazy!