Quote from: nightwatch on February 10, 2011, 09:22:49 PM

Not an exact clone but something that serves the same purpose - a digital currency. If an alternative became popular enough (for example, a special version for the chinese market), wouldn't Bitcoin have to give a market share to that alternative, and wouldn't sellers want to accept payments both in BTC and in the chinese alt currency? This way, there would be more digital money in the market and their value would have to drop.

Normally, the first to market wins. Since bitcoin was first to market it has a very big head start. An analogy could be that bitcoin is like gold. And the next currency "x" could be silver.