Tbh, I attribute the drop in the price of HIVE to the decline of Splinterlands too. Like it or not, SPL accounts for the majority of activity here. I guess what this means is that the future of HIVE will depends on what kind of winning applications set up shop over here.
I think that it at least contributed a lot to the price decline. I'm probably not the only one who decided to take this moment to sell my cards and most other probably sold their hive. I powered up everything on an alt account so far.