Bit disappointed about the falling price of MNX. Many of the speculators sold off their holdings when the rate change was announced back in May. Now the real believers in the project are holding on to their coins and presumably accumulating interest. Soon we will be hitting the first quarter after May and I'm guessing there will be more dumping when interest comes in. The falling price will encourage the less confident to sell off and move on, lowering the price further. The remainder will take advantage of the cheap price to snap up coins cheap, with little competition so it's a buyer's market.  Only the cheap orders will be filled, lowering the price further encouraging more dumping at low prices.  Those buyers then hold on to their coins accumulating more interest. Every 3 to 4 months the cycle will repeat, although less severely each time.

Throughout all of this there is little competition for buying so no mechanism to drive the price up.

When 1000 or so card orders fully completed in September ship, the recipients will be those with fairly decent sized holdings and no immediate need to purchase more coins to fulfill the minimum reserve balance = no pressure for buying and no market force on the price.

As the card is proven to work more of the orders will be fully completed, but likely by those who are already invested but cautiously waiting to see others try first.  As these people complete their orders they will likely have the funds already to fulfill the minimum requirements (especially as the majority of pre-orders are standard or gold which have quite low MNX requirements).

Active users of the cards have no need to purchase MNX to continue using it. They can continue to accumulate interest and spend that for free.  Or possibly not spend at all.  After all, why spend when you can keep on accumulating?

Finally people new to the project will hear of the working cards and want to try.  There will be a small increase in buying as people need the small amount of MNX required to get a standard or gold card up and running.  But once they have it there is no need for MNX any more. They will simply top up the card with good old reliable bitcoin, the trusted go-to coin well known to them.

Will MNX then be a victim of its own strategy?  While it is a very attractive project for crypto holders to spend crypto via the VISA card, there is no pressure to use MNX in the process, other then acquiring the very small amount required to set the card up.

In short, I see no market force putting competition on buy orders.

In order to raise the value of MNX the team can do one of two things:

1) increase the interest rates which will encourage more buying, but this is not sustainable and will be undone as soon as rates are reverted.

2) force the purchasing of MNX through use of the card. Any topups of the card in bitcoin will first exchange the bitcoin for MNX at market rates, and then be exchanged to USD for purchasing of the ETF.

This will generate a steady competition on buy orders, maintain liquidity and volume, raising and holding the value of MNX