I do fear a duplication of effort in the digital currency movement. It could get to be like linux where it goes from genuine freedom and competition to outright fragmentation. For those of us who believe in the politics of digital currencies this is a little bit concerning because it takes resources away from the more viable currencies. Endless forking and fragmentation has not helped linux compete with the establishment and I fear that the same may be true of digital cryptocurrencies.
For people who are only interested in speculation I suppose that they are interesting and I also suppose that nobody forces anybody to get involved with them.
Just my thoughts.
Well I doubt the branching is actually a big issue. The coins popping up will most fade away as the speculators speculate the hell out of it with some taking a profit and some losing. The hashrate will fluctuate for the major ones (like LTC dropped in diff when FTC and then CNC came out), but they'll get back to it once the new boom is out in a few days. It's quite ok I think and natural to happen for a while.