Your prediction: Dash goes to $6 (do you wish to take that back yet?) because you believe the masternode rewards are too high vs the costs of running a masternode... the same incentives which led Dash to a high above $1500 the last time.
I don't see it.
I'm simply accounting for the value that goes into the market and what happens to it. None of what you write addresses this, yet we're forced to do it for bookkeeping purposes. We have revenue, therefore there's a cost. The question therefore arises of who bears that cost and where ? It doesn't matter whether the coins get sold or not, it's still the same bookkeeping cost impact because debits must equal credits.
So you're basically saying that 2+2 can equal 8. That Dash can take pure revenue from the chain at zero difficulty week after week and still expect its capital value to grow while all the other mined chains have to hash out every block. Do you realise how ludicrous that sounds to any serious new investor who sits down to do some due diligence appraisal of Dash as a long term investment ? Even our utility doesn't grow - not because we lack features but (ironically) because we're such a poor store of value.
At a price of $3500, masternodes are at a pure profit of $4500 per week - for performing no economic work. Margins like that simply get repriced into oblivion in no time which is what happened at the last ATH which lasted only a matter of days. Good luck in getting out inside that window the next time it comes around.
There's got to be some fundamentals of the coin economics that square for the thing to be investible. It isn't enough just to talk about market cycles because there's far more Peercoins and Bitshares out there then Litecoins and Moneros. If BCH blows up the natural successor is Litecoin, not Dash because we're talking about store of value not utility. The chain doesn't have to be useful to be a good store of value but it does have to be a good store of value to be investible. The only thing you have in that regard in the absence of mass adoption, is mining.
P.S.
You say Litecoin has completed a bear market cycle and Dash has yet to complete its. Well Litcoin is at 1/10th of its ATH against Bitcoin and never went below it. Dash is ALREADY at 1/27th. So we're getting kind of late in pulling out of the nosedive. We'd need to dig ourselves out of the ground first.
You overstate the impact of masternode rewards vs the amount of money that will (and has now started) to flood the crypto markets. First BTC, then to the alts once BTC matches its previous ATH of $20K. BTC has done this twice now, I'm betting it will do it a 3rd time.
Now, let's look at PPC, XMR, LTC and Dash and use monthly (candle bodies, not wicks) highs and lows.
PPC: Nov-Dec 2013 = $9*, Dec 2016 = $0.16, Dec 2017-Feb 2018 = $4.42, Nov 2019 = $0.16
XMR: Dec 2017-Jan 2018 = $330, Jan-Feb 2019 = $42
LTC: Nov-Dec 2013 = $41, Apr 2015 = $1.50, Dec 2017-Jan 2018 = $230, Dec 2018-Jan 2019 = $29.70
DASH: Dec 2017-Jan 2018 = $1021, Dec 2019-Jan 2020 = $40
* couldn't 100% verify the $9 for PPC as all exchanges that traded PPC back then are gone...
Many coins bottomed out beginning of 2019, Dash was roughly $66 then and is different in that it hit a new low beginning of 2020 at $40 before exploding to the upside over 3x almost alone among all the cryptos. Dash does have a habit of doing this, moreso than other cryptos. I do think the slowness of Dash hitting its low is because of the incentives for masternodes to hold longer therefore it took longer for capitulation.
I still find it ridiculous for you to compare DASH to PPC as PPC ceased all development for a number of years and yet still rallied to hit 50% of its previous ATH. So, it shouldn't be a stretch to think that absolute worst case scenario is Dash hits $500 on a closed monthly candle in the next bull run. But Dash has not ceased development, has a number of institutional investors involved, has more exposure than the majority of other alts and has this new thing called Dash Platform coming out.
Once the alts hit their bottom vs BTC, it is quite logical to expect alts to rally in a major way to the upside. It's happened twice now, what has substantially changed to stop it from happening the 3rd time? What will prevent money from being poured into Dash while at the same time it's being poured into LTC and XMR? And let's assume that LTC and XMR rally first, this is very possible... do you think those holders won't diversify into a cheap Dash if it hasn't rallied yet? When Dash first rallied in Feb 2017, you could buy 21 LTC for 1 Dash and 8 XMR for 1 Dash... with such a huge divergence in relative prices only a couple of things can happen, Dash price goes down to correct the ratio or LTC and XMR's price rises to correct the ratio. The latter happened because the bull market had started.
Dash's last rally at the beginning of this year occurred in the bear market, so Dash corrected to the downside.
Now, I've made this point before but it should be repeated. Mining is a clever way to create an arm's race to drive up number of competitors and it works to a certain extent until there are more options to acquire coin other than from a miner. XMR is almost fully mined, maybe already in tail emission for block rewards so I reject the notion that the few coins mined a month would drastically push up the price vs the coins put up for sale mined years ago for much less. Inflation rate has more effect on price. Dash's inflation is still high, if not the highest, among the top mined coins. The more new supply, the more new demand you need to offset that. You are not going to get that in a bear market.
On another note, PPC has started development again over the last year or so... I wouldn't be surprised to see it hit $20 at least.
I think you are right that relatively soon after BTC comes close or crosses ATH,that money will start to diversify in other coins.But I disagree that it will happen like in 2017,because it is different situation on market today. When BTC reached $20K in late 2017, there were about $2 billions in crypto.Now it is almost $22 billions or 11x more.With BTC production cut to half,there is real chance that BTC will explode in next year and surpass $100K boundary.
What is different now is money distribution.2017 we had BTC on one side and all altcoins on the other side in more or less same situation.But now we had a situation that money is highly concentrated in only two blocks - BTC and ETH,which includes ETH and other coins and tokens based on it.That two blocks sucked almost all money invested in crypto.There is also much more institutional investors than it was in 2017,but theirs capital is also concentrated in just few coins - BTC,ETH,LTC,BCH,XRP,XLM.
So ,in 2017,all altcoins were in more or less same position and money distribution after BTC reached ATH, was also more or less equal.I dont think so that it will happened again,because capital is now concentrated in just few coins.Probably only few greatest altcoins will be pumped hard,while others will suffer small,so call exit pumps,propagated by big bagholders ,desperately trying to rid off of toxic assets.
Of course,few suprises are possible.What will happened with DASH? Good is that DASH has a nice technical developpment,but it was accompanied with very bad decisions in its economics part which reflected on its price and generally very little demand for it.As you can see DASH Buy orders are almost empty and it is much bigger problem than its actual price.Buy orders are at 20x lesser level than in its rivals.Memecoin like DOGE has 60x bigger Buy orders than DASH !!
If you look at higher time frames,you can see that DASH behaviour is quite different from BTC or ETH.Both,BTC and ETH had obvious capitualtion,followed with very high volume.DASH had not,but it is slowly bleeding for 3 years,obviously caused by constant selling pressure of masternode free coins and very low demand,now in phase when almost 100% capital was drain off.
DASH wealth distribution is heavily concentrated,market is quite shallow and there is no enough demand - Buy orders to apsorb even a moderate dump.Obvious sign on DASH high centralization is 2017 bull run.From 4500 masternodes only 13% of it, sold coins during the pump when DASH value grew more than 100x. There is no investor who will miss such opportunity and in truly decentralized ownership we should see much bigger masternode coins sell off and later rebuy.
That pump was driven by people which holds vast majority of masternodes.These huge masternode owners already paid off theirs investments multiple times and drained DASH to the last drop.They have no motive to risk theirs capital in making big pump again except greed.Empty Buy orders and almost every day ATL of DASH/BTC pair, are signs that they are not much interested in staying coin afloat.
Today, DASH is not in position like it was in 2017,when all altcoins were in almost same position.Chances to attract needed significant external capital after such poor performance and with tougher competition is quite low.As i said ,money is much more concentrated now than it was ever before,there is no interest of retail or institutional investors for DASH and mine opinion is that is more likely to see exit pump with flash crash.There are no chances for DASH without significant changes in DASH economy,especially between masternodes and miners,with huge reduction of masternodes reward(there are in no position to dump,because Buy orders are empty).Also there is little chance that they will do anything what would compromise theirs lofty positions.
With all its positive sides,DASH missed chance to become ETH true rival.