I don't understand why bigger players would need a bigger hashing-power option as they can always just buy more 5 GH/s-es . What's the reasoning behind this?
In theory that makes sense, but the issue that I've seen so far is the lack of liquidity. If you want to but 10BTC of MINE, for example, you can buy it on-market or you can buy EXCH and sell off the SELL. However, you're going to see a lot of slippage either way.
I'm not sure if the decrease in total activity by volume is a result of the decrease in NAV/U, decrease in the BTC/USD rate, decrease of total Havelock volume, or a combination of the three.
For ppl buying B.MINE as a replacement for another mining asset this fund has become unattractive. For one it's the obvious reason that without liquidity in B.SELL it's tedious to get MINE only. Buying MINE @ market price costs 0.0091 for 5GH/s where cex costs around .00825 (I'm not too sure whether this comparison is entirely fair though tbh). Adding to that there's the end-game that requires brain power to grasp and adds another obstacle if in a buy-and-forget mind-set.
Buying SELL has become a big gamble since it's unclear if and when there will be dividends in this round at all. Then there are the timing problems you mentioned where you will always overpay when buying B.EXCH even if you buy right after diff-change. The point deprived wanted to make when DMS was first offered was that people were overpaying for mining assets (and creating a way for non-believers to capitalize on this assumption). Because people aren't overpaying any more the raison d'être for BDD in it's current form is no longer valid. I don't think an offer with 5TH/s will solve that. For the next round the changes necessary are not just changing numbers around in the current model but rather a complete overhaul of the fund that represents the "new truth" that mining has levelled out and won't rise at 20% per diff-change any more.
We should start discussing how the fund can be changed for the next round.