People just abandon bitcoin and moving to cryptocurrencies. Why do they need a store of value if they can have both store of value and a currency? So, why should one use bitcoin and not litecoin or monero? The reason? Because public invested in bitcoin brand so much?
I think those who abandon bitcoin are those dumb money who entered the crypto since december 2017, after they encountered the massive gains in the first week of january they thought that they can go rich overnight and after experiencing the massive dips these dumb money got shaken and pull out their money..
Nevertheless speed of transaction maybe caused by less transactions made and increased of miners as more people who actually gained more profits in the past weeks have cashout and decided to have passive incomes and purchased mining rigs..These data can be confirmed by more demands of graphic cards now adays not for gaming but for mining cryptocurrencies..