Great points, we view this similar I just guess in different ways of getting to the same viewpoints. I do agree too much marketcap and the fluctuations on it is a situation in itself with issues, growing pains I always say. Bitmain has a few secret fears lately, I have a few inside sources due to actually working in a coin myself so I hear stuff. Right now the rumor around the water cooler is that Bitmain and other miner hardware producers are taking huge issues with Nvidia and Amd jumping on making mining specific cards, they know those guys have way more resources and could one day make even more efficient ASICS if they find that going the miner hardware route is more beneficial. So I have this odd feeling they want to grasp a little hold on the market while they still can. Maybe not to control but to definitely keep up to the top before bigger corporations get into the mix.
Far as Bitcoin mining, its a losing game right now for small time miners like myself. With all these high fees and price surges it still is a electricity cost vs profit margin that still makes no sense to bother with, better to point to altcoins to break in some profits and that seriously confuses a lot of us miners due to the fact these fees are so high but they aren't actually being spread around, just going to the corporate side of the situation.
When it comes to me you kind of have to understand I came in a long time ago with Bitcoin and do believe in them. But the crypto space was not about the money for me, it was only for the movement to change the world and rid us of the central banking corruption on the world. So I look for signs a lot with issues in this space and lately they are every where abound. There is a small group of us taking notes and I just see a few issues that could send us in the wrong direction.
Take Ethereum for instance, that is a bad coin for the movement. They have JP Morgan with investments on that, which is the very entity that runs the central bank system. Then you got Ripple as well with nothing but central bank invested backing. Yet everyone is ICO crazy and pumping the heck out of coins that could very well bring the doors to government centralization in crypto. The movement side is a goner if people don't wake up to the inner schemes that is being played on crypto right now. Bitcoin may not be at the center of trying to ruin anything but corruption always abounds when money is involved and if they want to reclaim the real reason Satoshi put this together, spreading around that power control system with miners and developers is going to be very important.
To answer your question how I can be sure Bitmain is wrong for this. To simply threaten a fork that would divide the coin in 2 is dictatorship styled consensus. Its a scare tactic and to me a wrong way to go about it because they aren't being open to options like you should be in decentralized open source platforms. If they fire their Segwit off before August as they say they will....then mark my words that split will happen and we may end up with a lot of people hurt and with major losses just like the Ethereum fiasco fork. Maybe it will all work out but I guess you say I see things inside that seem less decentralized on their side.
Either way I can't move Bitcoin around anymore with the way I do business. I am 100% a crypto full time user, do not own a bank account nor have held cash in my hands for a very long time so for a user like myself this mess effects my every day life in a very horrible downsizing way. I am not planning to return to fiat so I have to run to Litecoin for now I guess till this irons itself out.