But this project suffers from price manipulation and lack of liquidity is still a deterrent to people joining. I've been saying this for a while now.
I think that I would argue price manipulation. I was part of the group that bought in 55K-60K. The reason it rose so much was due to the speculative nature of Mr. Spread's development and what was coming. The fallout occurred during the very concerted fud effort that was quite successful. Mr. Spread's banning didn't help either and might have helped the fud storm.
There does seem to be a psychological deterrent though and some of it might be attributable to the the large amount of fanaticism amongst the DRK community (I say that in the most positive of ways; I am a DRK holder) - It's like some people painted there skin bright oranges and reds and grew fangs after buying DRK. Tis the nature of crypto.
I also think that SPR is no threat to DRK. Those saying DRK or BTC level prices are possible/imminent are actually hurting in my opinion...but there is no reason that the price won't reflect the proficiency of Mr. Spread when the code is finished and released to Mainnet.
With regards to lack of testers...phase two seems to have a higher participation rate than phase one. The thing with phase two is that 4 times as many MN's were required for testing and we are 80% of the way there in a bit over 36 hours. 300 MN's for phase one was a similar time frame if I am not mistaken...
Of course, all we can do is see what happens. If it works...it works.
How does it hurt the price if we establish what a coin is worth before it reaches that point? The reality is that coins are not backed by anything physical. This means that a coin is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If everyone believes that dogecoin will go to the moon, guess what people holding dogecoin will do? They will hold it until it hits the moon. If we express to the general population that SPR is worth $100 a piece (which I believe it is) then that will become the psychological value. Meaning that people will hold at least until that point, but by that point it will have become so popular that we can expect a stable price.