If and when bitcoins start becoming more popular, which is what we all want, there is nothing stopping Amazingon from crushing it with their own brand of p2p currency. Thoughts?
As soon as I understood the concept that was my very first thought. There's a lot of incentive for entities like American Express, a bank in Asia, eastern Europe, the treasury of a small country, a venture capitalist, to roll their own version of Bitcoin rather than support the existing Bitcoin system, because of the enormous potential profits from keeping a percentage of the founding Bitcoins plus transaction fees for making a market. Such entities could make their P2P currencies much more accessible and have more real-economy links so the currency is much more usable.
But Bitcoin users may stick with Bitcoins if it is perceived as more trustworthy by not being attached to a large corporation or government, and if Bitcoins are perceived as providing more privacy and anonymity.
Right now with the Mt. Gox fiascoes and its offer to open its books to the DEA and its inviting the FBI into investigate its users for the security breach that brought down its market, it is not obvious that Bitcoins would have an advantage relative to the P2P currency sponsored by Amazon.com or other large entity.