Ripper, I appreciate your fair comparison of the two contenders. Ive no stake in neither of them, but I am reading about them trying to figure things out. I have a question about Mastercoin: can the value of a single Mastercoin be so high that somebody that do not own any Mastercoins can not afford to buy assets tied to the Mastercoin?
We are all building a layered system.
Bitcoin value is increasing.
Mastercoin and Protoshares value are "tied to Bitcoin value" in some broad sense.
Mastercoin maybe more so because it relies on it technically and increased Mastercoin value directly benefits Bitcoin.
However I think every cryptocurrency at this point benefits Bitcoin.
Both these projects are building systems that require MSC and PTS to operate.
You will need MSC (or something as valuable as MSC) to work with some of our features.
MSC can be very high, but it's very divisible, so you'll also be able to buy "MSC backed USD" even if 1 MSC = 100 BTC = 100,000,000 USD one day.