I would make the point that, most likely, the excess marginal mining production by AWS instances is shifting toward more of a balance between GPU's and CPU's and not CPU's alone .. with the introduction of more refined and available software. It's a balance that's not been observed before that I know of .. so the questions you're asking don't have simple answers because there's no real history to compare this to; however, the price is fluctuating, more so than it is decreasing or increasing right now.

note the corrected aws c3.8xl hash rate, most recent posting data, is 1201, as mentioned earlier in this thread.  block rewards coming in at 15.99, aws spot rate around .26.

GPU hashing clouds the issue a bit, but it's pretty inaccessible still, requires substantial GPU hardware (repurposed from scrypt presumably) and adding capacity to mine XMR specifically seems unlikely.  A model for GPU hash pricing should cover all the CNs (in the broad sense, i.e. including BBR), account for nvidia vs. amd distribution, and rebalance according to yield.  Do-able, but non-trivial.  The AWS marginal model has the advantage of being trivially available information and the disadvantage of becoming less and less predictive as GPU hashing increases.
 

I get just under 0057.  It seems likely that the current price can't last.  Hot money will burn off eventually.  But it will do so slowly, as all the alt markets are at low volume ebb while btc is depressed.  Some speculate that when btc is depressed, alt traders tend to rotate into btc, in anticipation of rising btc costs.  Given that alt trades are 99% using btc as numeraire,  this seems utter folly to me, but that doesn't make it untrue.  If true, they will lose quite a bit of value in the rotation process, on average.
 

It wasn't my intent.  Market evidence seems to be that selling is abating faster than buying is abating, recently, although both are abating.

Momentum tends to drive the price beyond equilibria, and most of my effort goes into trying to find the equilibrium points and their relative stability.  I'm uncomfortable predicting how far momentum will overshoot.  Others are better at that.  I have a monkey for that.  (But he is ignorant of XMR yet.)

I do think we are near current equilibrium, and the equilibrium point is rising with difficulty. 

There is some small forum evidence that p&ds are planning to hit XMR again soon, but I hope not.  I prefer organic growth and low volatility.

Dark = market leader, the coin that actually developed anonymous solutions when others were saying "the exchanges will ban you", "nobody needs anonymity", "good luck with your darkcoin name - it'll go nowhere", "the NSA will hunt you down", "it will be banned" and all type of idiotic stuff.

It cannot be compared with coins that are trailing in its wake (offering nothing btw - like Cryptcoin which right now has a ...whitepaper).

There is a reason why DRK is where it is and others are where they are:

Indisputibly so.  I consider dark to be shady, however.  I sold out of drk and moved to xmr for three primary reasons: (1) CN protocol allows me to actually control the size of my anonymity set, and I have confidence that the set will hold; not so drk.  (2) P&D/premine/ponzi factors are beyond my tolerance level in drk.  (3) Snake oil crypto claims raise my hackles.  I'm just not going to trust my life and treasure to drk' s protocols.  Great coin if you love forks, however.

I don't think anyone advocates xmr more strongly than I do.  I am taking my own medicine, and I don't want anyone else to get sick either.  It definitely benefits me if others adopt XMR, but I strongly believe that it will benefit them as well, as long as they don't own more than they can hold in strong hands.  

It isn't the leading coin with privacy claims, in terms of market cap.  It isn't the first cryptonote protocol coin.  It isn't the most user friendly coin by a nautical mile.  But it does have a balance of factors which convince me that it is the leading candidate to supply the net with private liquidity for years to come.  In areas where it is weak, it is good enough, and improving.  In areas where it is strong, it is distinguished from its competitors by the honesty and frankness of its development team, it's open-source ethos, its fair launch, its methodical, un-hyped progress, in a well-planned and prioritized process, and the size and growth of its hashing infrastructure.

I really do think that slow and steady can win this race.  It's already good enough for technically aware people to use, and it won't take long for it to be good enough for anyone who is comfortable with bitcoin today to use it.  How long it will take before it is suitable for mainstream use, I dare not venture -- years, I would say, since that is a very high bar of usability (think iPod).  But it has all it needs now to get there in due time.

I don't know if pictures are allowed in here but


source: https://poloniex.com/exchange/btc_xmr


is it a bottom or just bravado?

Personally, I'm invested, to some degree or the other, in the whole anonymous market - so I don't have to worry so much about who wins and who doesn't. I'm well hedged so to speak.

There are fundamentals in place that I have analyzed in the DRK thread, with great precision - as to how the situation would evolve in terms of marketcaps and other anon coins that would join the party after DRK... That was ~4 months ago. The context of the discussion was about the need for marketing and promotion of DRK, where I said that the fundamentals of explosive growth in new markets will take care of everything - so no real need for promo/hype/spamming etc.


The same applies today. The market cap of anon coins is nearly identical with my prediction, and it is dominated by DRK (>50%), Bytecoin & clones and Bitcoin-based pumps & dumps or coins that are ...trying. I also predict this 1% will gradually be extended towards the 10% mark - but that will be slower in comparison to the 1% (that should be obvious).

The only piece of the puzzle left, to diversify into, are zero-proof coins - which can come in and claim superiority against mixing practices in Bitcoin & Bytecoin.

I do have some ANCs from the times when DRK and ANC were the only anon coins in existence (zerocash wasn't an option back then), so my hedge against DRK was ANC by necessity. ANC has been very low in price (given the coins in circulation) and has promised zerocash integration in early July... if that hedge also manages to blow up in price, well, ...I'll be damned...

Am I right in thinking that every time Monero goes lower than what we expect. It'll encourage the price to go even lower?

The way I see it. Many people called a bottom of about 0.005 to 0.006. However now we're close to 0.003 - 0.004. People might start selling off because they are losing confidence that even people in this thread cannot predict the price.

I wouldn't be surprised if we hit the 0.002's again. Until the development branch incorporates a GUI it'll look like to the average investor that Boolberry is in fact gaining ground. I am certain Boolberry isn't gaining ground, the Monero team are working on what's important, but the average user or investor does not see this.

Most people are only interested in fluff. Hense Hal Finney's fears about a clone coin overtaking without being valid enough to warrent a takeover. Only coins with an order of magnitude leap in technology really warrant having an existance at all let alone overtaking a market leader.

I have great faith in Monero. If another Cryptonote coin takes over it'll be a realization of Half Finney's fears. Because the clone coins are not innovative enough to warrent a take over. My stand is simple; If Monero loses because of the marketing hype of Boolberry, I will get out of all CryptoNote and back into Bitcoin as it would be proof a CryptoNote coin cannot be a store of value. I will not have my wealth held hostage to the pump and dump of the alt coin world. I only invested in Monero because I saw it as being a true second coin to Bitcoin. Apart from Monero I have never dealt with alts. Even though I invested before rpeitila ever mentioned Monero I completely agree with his rational for investing.

Boolberry's slight modifications do not warrant destruction of a market leader. This is the same argument the Litecoin supporters came up with. The litecoin supporters said that Litecoin deserves to overtake Bitcoin because of the 4 times speed gain.

They didn't consider the disastrous precedent that would set. Because then the next coin to offer a slight improvement would have its argument that they should now overtake the market leader. This was the crux of Half Finney's argument. Only a coin overwhelming better should overtake Bitcoin. If anything less were to take over all confidence in crypto being a store of value would forever be lost.

Sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes I wrote this on my phone. :p

You've said everything malicious/negative that you could think of in just a few sentences. Instamine, devs scammers incompetent, broken anon, masternode fail, centralization, pump & dump, etc etc. Obviously the market is idiots and you are the smart guy. Or...


...so given your admission you can rest assured I'm not getting you the "wrong" way.