While this is probably true, if they started at a difficulty of 1, or .25, and the coin became popular, very quickly, it would be impossible to get coins, and if it was traded, the coin would be unprofitable to mine. So that means basically anyone without 10 - 30 MH's rigs (for litecoin variants) would get scraps, where as currently with some of the new coins, anyone who sees a release quick enough,m even with minimal hashing power, can scoop up a few thousand coins and possible a nice profit if its traded. I say something like .025 would be a better start than .25 or 1.
What was Bitcoin's original starting difficulty, anyone know?
Okay well if you really want to premine the shit out of it, the minimum *safe* starting difficulty can be calculated using the following equation:
difficutly = plausible_attacker_hashrate * time_per_block / 2^32
So using 2 blocks per second and an attacker with 50 MHash/s that would make the minimum sane starting difficulty 0.0058207. Anything lower than that and an attacker with 50 MHash/s or less can hijack the network easily. But 0.005 is not a very fair starting difficulty in my opinion, as it will still be an orphan-fest for everyone mining.