Not to belabor the point, but I wasn't talking about the business model - I was talking about functionality. Basically, whether Counterparty's exchange functionality is going to remain relevant and be integrated into what Symbiont is doing -- will Symbiont be powered by Counterparty's exchange functionality -- or is there going to be complete or partial overlap between Counterparty's exchange funcitonality and whatever functionality Symbiont is putting together.
The obvious concern for any XCP holder is whether Counterparty is on its way to being made irrelevant by whatever Symbiont is doing. Basically, is Symbiont going to be of long-term benefit to Counterparty beyond some payments to XCP developers?
I assume that question/uncertainty is one of the factors (certainly not the only factor) that's been dragging down the XCP price and has kept it from recovering.
I don't think I've yet gotten a straight answer to a highly relevant question for XCP holders, but if I'm missing something here feel free to point it out.
From what I understand, there WILL NOT be a technology overlap because Symbiont will be powered by Counterparty. I repeat, Symbiont will running on Counterparty.
Symbiont is a business entity that will be profit driven and as such the only area where there might be overlaps are areas where services which the underlying technology is powered by counterparty are offered. For instances its possible (this is a just a random example) if Symbiont started offering a crowdfunding service they would be in direct competition with the likes of say "Koinify", swarm, etc
On the other hand, this does not really give them a business advantage because Counterparty is a free open source platform and anyone is free to develop any services on the platform. The only limitation being your imagination, expertise and effort.
However, if the purpose of your question was to derive a reason/cause for the price decline then your guess is as good as mine :-)
Chee
Now this was the straight answer I was looking for. Only remaining question is, are you one of the core devs?
No, like you I am part of the CP community (albeit an early one) and at certain of points at time I shared your same concerns. This is merely an informed opinion from the publicly available information, postings, blogs and following of the overall project direction since the beginning