I still think the fundamentals of the coin are strong; also I have a high tolerance for risk and a bucket load of patience.

Well said. That's the only way to play the crypto game. I too agree this is an amazing coin and platform.

I don’t think the current slump in price can be attributed to them, there are lots factors at play from what I can see.

User retention, active users, user growth, etc.. those definitely have an important impact on the price. At the same time, I've been doing these exchange reports for a while now and when I see people talking in the price channel over and over again about the dumps on exchanges which I also see in my data, I have to wonder how influential their actions are. If every price rally is slammed down with a huge dump, that can turn off a lot of investors (especially when it's the startup founders doing the dumping).

That's a great article, thanks for sharing. I loved this part:

Andreas Antonopoulos is the voice of reason in this discussion

And in many others. I really hope he chimes in on Steemit soon.

Maybe Vitalik’s actions hurt Ethereum also. Unfortunately there's no way (yet) to run multiple versions of reality in simulations to figure out what the Nash equilibrium could have been.