This is just one of those stretches where everything is taking a hit. The new money coming into the altcoin economy quickly flows back out via the "grift of the week." Last week it was Urocoin (a few fraudulent documents, a bad Photoshop job, and "Uro" in the name which literally means "Urine"). If something has been around for more than a couple weeks it is considered old news. That is ridiculous and it needs to change.
Vertcoin and Monocle are an awesome combo. In fact, I borrowed part of the Vertcoin code to implement into my own coin. A great cryptocurrency needs to have fair distribution, a secure blockchain, and should have a purpose beyond just existing. As the first Scrypt-N coin, Vertcoin instantly filled a need as ASICs began to ship.
Monocle is great because you get the same competent development team, a secure network due to the merge-mining, and a great way to interfere with the coin-hopping formulas that essentially do nothing more than damage altcoins and contribute to inconsistency in network speeds. Beyond that, Monocle has proven to be a great test bed for new features (as we have recently witnessed with the stealth address features).
Unfortunately, at the present time, innovation and technical specifications are overshadowed by hype, pump-and-dumps, and fraud. As far as I'm concerned, a developer actually concerned about creating something revolutionary would leverage an existing currency and build upon it instead of creating one from scratch at this point. I have seen coins with 20% premines that have threads 400 pages deep and people lining up to buy the coins as the "dev" unloads them 2 weeks after launch, I have seen IPOs that raise hundreds of BTC only to have the "dev" vanish without even releasing the coin - this is insanity. There is so much confusion and so little education. People blindly buy anything and everything off the slightest "tip" and nobody seems to care about proof or even the identity of the developers.
There is a fundamental problem with this market but I am confident it will recover eventually. As more people begin to demand honesty, integrity, and quality we will see a rise in the select handful of worthy cryptocurrencies. I truly believe that VTC and MON are first-class currencies that are simply suffering from a lack of hype. The launch of MON was possibly the most fair I have ever been a part of and distribution is amazingly wide considering how deflated the value and interest remains. Fortunately, the PoW network remains strong and steady due to the merge-mining - MON isn't going anywhere.
My future plans for Murraycoin will involve more of a focus on educating and informing people new to cryptocurrency; we need to begin weeding out the trash and simplifying the concepts and we all need to work together to make it happen. If people start demanding quality we will start getting quality. We have this extreme disconnect where everybody is out there throwing their money around haphazardly instead of doing research - when they eventually lose everything, they often never come back. The barrier of entry into this world remains too great for the average person - we need to lower or eliminate that barrier. Finally, investors and members of the community need to quit complaining, quit focusing on a change to the PoW algorithms, quit worrying about daily updates and panicking when they don't come - they need to start contributing. Just buying a coin isn't enough - if you have skills and can contribute then, by all means, contribute! Build an app or fire up an open source project, no matter how simple, that gives Monocle another use. Instead of spreading panic when prices dwindle (which only contributes to more panic and downward momentum) start spreading the word! Grass roots marketing is huge in cryptocurrency! People are spreading their money across a dozen or more random altcoins and, as a result, they don't really have their heart in any of them. Pick a few you like with great devs and start focusing on helping to build exposure and build the community. Everybody has something they can do to contribute - this is one of the rare markets where everybody invested can do something to help grow the value of their investment.
There is this strange phenomena that exists in this market where everybody feels entitled just for buying a few coins. We need to work together and build up these quality coins together. A development team of one or two people, with limited resources, can only do so much. People underestimate the commitment it takes to be a good dev - dozens of PMs daily, constant updates, continued innovation, dealing with the fear and panic if deadlines are missed - it is a lot of work with a minimal reward. We need to move the marketing beyond this forum - there is so much noise here. Competition, distraction, negativity - it's a wasteland of altcoins. Yes there is an audience here but this isn't the place to market a coin any longer - after the first 2 weeks nobody cares - it's old news; most people here are just looking to get in early on the next big pump-and-dump.
This dev is great but he cannot do everything - this community needs to come together and start getting organized. Quit sweating the small stuff and start doing your part to secure the future of your investment.
Just my 2 MON
Not every single new feature has to make it to Vertcoin, right? 
