I think rpietila came along early in the life of Monero but after the core devs already joined the project.
Correct.
One if the interesting things I see in Monero is that proportionally more bitcoin early adopters are involved than I see in other alt coins.
Is it because:
1. Bitcoin early adopters see Monero as a viable hedge to side chains and other potential fungibility/privacy fixes for bitcoin?
or
2. Bitcoin early adopters have been around long enough to recognize obvious pump/dump clone coins lacking much innovation and are far better at avoiding them than cryptocurrency newcomers trying to find the "next bitcoin"
I think we all can agree that 99+% of all altcoins will fail. How do early adopters identify coins that may be among the <1% to succeed as either a bitcoin hedge or a viable option to fill some niche that bitcoin either can/will not?
+1 All of the above is true.
My process on "how" is in reality based on hunch, but in theory goes about as follows:
The coin needs to be the first legitimate instance of its kind, had a fair start/emission, and a market niche-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Litecoin FAIL (not the first of its kind)
Peercoin FAIL (no market niche)
Bytecoin FAIL (not fair start)
Boolberry FAIL (not the first of its kind)
Ethereum FAIL (questionable start)
All shitcoins FAIL (2-3 counts)
Only BTC and XMR fulfill all conditions, so it makes sense to invest into them (and them alone). To be fully hedged, you can keep 99.8% in BTC and set 0.2% aside in XMR. Going over this ratio, is overinvesting in XMR.