Lol I haven't spent much time in this thread for well over a month now... I'm remembering why. It's turned into a bad daytime talk show of the likes of Jerry Springer. I'm just waiting for someone to drop the "YOU DON'T KNOW ME!" line.
In regards to the falling price, I have been observing some very interesting things lately. I'll take this moment to share while we wait for them to reveal if Bumface is really the father...
One of the economic principles that bitcoin is based on concerns the relationship between coin price, mining difficulty and cost to mine. The idea was that price of bitcoin would reflect the cost of mining that bitcoin (how much hashrate/hardware and power it would take to mine a BTC) which is derived from the difficulty. In theory, as the cost to mine increases, the price would increase-- leading to more mining > increased difficulty > higher cost to mine > increase in price and so on. This pattern is well established throughout BTC's history as well as other cryptos like LTC: Increases in price correlate very well with increases in difficulty, especially in the early days of a coin. There's a bit of "chicken-egg" argument here, but I believe the reality is a positive feedback loop where ^ price drives ^ difficulty which drives ^ price.
Now consider Ultracoin. Because UTC has very little utility (liquidity) outside of arbitration (which negates itself as bought UTC is immediately sold), UTC's price is almost entirely influenced by the pattern outlined above. Only in UTC's case, the positive feedback loop is causing price to fall along with difficulty. Price dropped after launch (amplified by a severe crypto bear market) which caused miners to go elsewhere. As miners left, difficulty fell lower and lower. Miners who stayed with UTC generated UTC at a quicker rate-- the cost to mine went down. If you'll remember, even while UTC was dropping it was almost always one of the most profitable coins to mine. In fact, at current prices, UTC is STILL very profitable compared to many other alts (depending on your power cost, hardware, etc).
To sum up:
*UTC price is almost entirely influenced by cost to mine at this point, as there is little else to affect the UTC market, much like the early days of BTC.
*Cost to mine is decreasing due to miners leaving > decreasing difficulty > more coins for miners who stay > miners can sell at lower prices
If all this holds true, then the best short term boost for UTC would come from increasing the cost to mine. But it has to be done naturally, not by cutting block rewards or increasing block times. The only solution for this would be bringing in new miners to boost difficulty. Features such as shorter POS, more consistent N-factors, and better resources for miners (configgen, how-tos, etc) will go a long way towards helping this issue. This community should continue to focus on these items.
Disregarding the first couple of lines of negativity and sarcasm, Musicmaker is absolutely correct.
UTC has been at the top of the charts for awhile now in regards to profitability. This is what should be shouted out in the chats and promoted.
This would have and still can attract new miners to the coin. As I'm sure most miners will agree, we hold some and we sell some.
I would hazard a guess that a lot of the old miners of UTC that are still mining have a bag full of UTC that they are satisfied with for now.
Since UTC is one of the most or not the most profitable coin, they continue to mine, but dump all of their recently mined coins to invest in BTC, LTC, BC, DRK, and a few other P & D coins. By attracting new miners, you should see them bag some coin and dump some coin. This will reduce the dumping and take away from those who dump all of their coins.
The number of coins generated daily does not change with more miners. The difficulty will rise and the coin will be harder to get and hoard, causing demand to rise.
In the long run there still needs to be development for the actual uses of the coin, which dcgirl has been so graciously devoting her time. Unfortunately there are too many here that want immediate results and returns. Focus on expanding the community first. Be nice to new members. Help them with their configurations regardless of how many times it has been posted in the past. Isolationism will not work here and is not what we want. There are a lot of miners, who would love to use their gpu's to mine a profitable coin. Let's help them.