Us debunking BTC-alt hype IS the free market. We are the free market too. The free market doesn't mean one doesn't act, and lets the false marketing claims of smaller copycat competitors go unchallenged. As long as we don't use force to compel them to stop using their product, anything we do is just as much a part of the free market as the promotion of BTC-alts.
Interesting fact, but that alone isn't alarming. Afterall, lets say the marketcap of Bitcoin is $1.5 billion (I know, i could go look it up, but I'm lazy!).
4% of that (the amount that's controlled by the top 10 addresses is $60 million. 10% of that (each addresses share, supposing that they're equally distributed, which they aren't) is $6 million. That's interesting, but that's all it is. Afterall, they could be owned by early adopters, people who bought their way in (ie, the Winklevosses), etc.
But I fully agree with the free markets being crap. This recent financial crisis was the result of "free markets" (ie, less regulation letting banks screw things up). If not for government intervening in the free market, we'd likely have a couple monopolies to choose from, and that'd be it.
Congratulations, you're making the same arguments those who want to ban Bitcoin are making.
The only reason those with a lot of bitcoin are rich is that others are CHOOSING to use a payment network in which they hold a large stake. How do you suggest we remedy that? Make it illegal to own a cryptocurrency in which a small group happen to own a large amount? If people want to use a currency that rewards early adopters or big investors, that's their choice. To say "free markets are crap" suggests you don't want people to have the freedom to choose.
No, Bitcoin brought new ideas to the world, for certain.
The arguments commonly trotted out arguments against Litecoin (let alone the other Alt Coins) center around:
A) They were created to enrich the early adopters
B) They're no good because there's no where to spend them
Both of which were used (and are still used, to lesser extents) against Bitcoin. Which makes it funny that Bitcoiners shrug off those arguments against their favorite cryptocurrency, yet launch them at any others.
The arguments against BTC-copycats are that:
1) They're not, as it's claimed, 'ASIC proof'.
2) Being 'ASIC proof' is not an advantage anyway, since without ASICs, there will still be a way to develop specialized hardware/facilities to perform a particular algorithm much more efficiently than what a casual miner could access.
3) The small changes made to Bitcoin's code to create them do not come close to making up for the disadvantage they have in being smaller networks of users/merchants/exchanges. While BTC was also negligible in terms of supporting economy when it came out, it had huge technical differences from fiat.
Many of us do think that many alt coins provide interest twists on Bitcoin's precepts that do bear investigating, rather than simply being blown out of the water by a 51% attack.
I personally am not suggesting a >50% attack. It could risk dividing the Bitcoin community, could prevent a future BTC-alt that is truly innovative (as opposed to the hyped up copycats on the market now), and could eliminate what could be a valuable source of experimental data.
For instance:
Litecoin has both faster confirmations (much more suitable for retail/in-person transactions), and an algorithm that SHOULD be more resistant to ASIC miners becoming such dominant forces in the ecosystem.
2.5 minutes is no where suitable for retail. Retail will always require either zero-conf txs or trusted 3rd party verification. Those claiming otherwise have big stakes in the useless coins.
Being resistant to ASIC miners doesn't mean being immune to them. If specialized hardware is difficult to produce for a particular hashing algorithm, the result will likely be that when one is eventually developed, its manufacturer will be the sole maker of the hardware for a long time, before a competitor finally emerges with enough resources to create a competing product. This is a force for centralization of mining, not decentralization.