The price decline is not due to ASIC.
To some extent, it is.
When anyone with a GPU could mine and make some coins, the economy was healthy.
Now, to truly create the aforementioned coins, you need to invest (a lot) in ASICs. Thus, it's not a "for all" game. It's elitist.
An elitist currency is not healthy. It's as simple as that - BTC needs "John Doe" to be able to mine, not only "John Trump".
What Bitcoin was at the start is no longer valid. John Doe is cashing out, and I do not blame him.
I disagree only on one point: it was always an elitist game. The same people who had hoards of money to set up massive GPU farms now have hoards of money to get ASICs.
It's the same story - the rich get richer.