It doesn't just involve ethics and morality but investment risk. The fact that "Satoshi" controls 500k to 1.2 million coins is definitely something to consider from an investment risk perspective and should cause a bit of alarm. Bitcoins distribution ratio is not as good as many fiat currencies at the moment and this should make many investors skeptical and concerned. These concerns should be much greater with many alts including NXT.
Right, but I was talking about traders, not investors. Maybe it's better to call them gamblers? They are more important for coin popularity than investors because provide liquidity.
Agreed, day traders are akin to gamblers in my book. NxT should be fine regardless of initial distribution as long as the top 7-20 largest bagholders are independently wealthy and can be patient enough to allow adoption to slowly grow. The same concerns apply to bitcoin but with bitcoin we know many of the largest bagholders are indeed independently wealthy and can afford to save and invest in the long term success of the currency, the same cannot be said with many alts including NxT. Time will tell I suppose.
The larger concern is lack of merchant adoption and volume , but I understand that the gamble is betting on NXT being more of a financial platform than a currency.
So it's safe to say that we probably eliminated all weak hands and opportunists from NXT, and the current core investors are serious about holding it
That is an irrational assumption with no supporting facts. If 7-20 whales control most of NxTs supply they could have plenty more coins to offload continuously upon the exchanges. Time will tell whether the downward spiral of lack of volume and loss in market share and price will ever reverse. I am not going to speculate as to NxT's future as most these early investors are anonymous and I have no idea as to their current financial standing or stability. One thing that is known since there doesn't exist inflation like other assets , you can see that Nxt investors are offloading their Nxt for other coins or Nxt assets(many of which are highly questionable in nature).