I somehwat agree with you liqio, about the 'fake' market cap from ripple. market cap is a function of the liquid assets being traded. all instruments will have some portion which is illiquid, such as founders holding them. this is true for stocks and Bitcoin too. arguably for ripple there would be a much greater percentage that's illiquid and so the numbers would inflated by multiples. also, a secondary result is that with such a small actual trading volume, it is much cheaper to prop up the price and maintain a larger cap. not sure if all that's what you meant.
consider what would happen if everyone who's bought into the neucoin prelaunch dumped the coins back at break even and neucoin foundation bought them. then there's no real volume, but they could fake it and set any price they want. obviously this is an extreme example, but the point is the smaller the actual market, the more room they have to play games with the price and market cap.
I agree, it won't catch on the way bitcoin has. It's not really innovative, although the devs claim it is.
Woow free coins, like we haven't seen that already. But don't get me wrong i like the concept of getting free money and being able to buy amazon gift card, but if you really want to have engough to buy one you'll probably have to mine. A lot of people who aren't familiar with cryptocurrencies won't realise that, and excpect more than they should. Also als someone metioned here before, the rich get richer and the poor get even more poor. That's why i don't think NeuCoin is gonna catch on. Also because free money kiiinda looks like a scam if you aren't familiar with cryptocoins.