Hey all,
Adam here - If you think about NXT and XCP like "fundraisers" than you're missing the point.

They are not fundraisers, they are spreading-around-the-blame.   Both projects (NXT and counterparty) have anonymous developers, both of them have no mining to distribute coins as Satoshi did, and neither of them apparently needed development funds because NXT raised about $2000 worth of BTC and XCP burned 2100BTC.

So compare that to a method where they sell the tokens - Whose going to buy a new, proof of stake token from someone who won't even tell you their name?  Not many.

Compare it to a method where they give them away - They reward only people who wait for opportunities where they can get something for nothing and those people with more time than anything useful to do with it will become your first line of distribution, and will probably be happy with just about anything because there was no cost for them to acquire it.

But either raising a trivial amount of money (NXT) or simply saying "throw it in the fire and nobody will get it" (XCP) require a proof of give-a-shit and at least pretend to understand it enough to warrant throwing good money into a black hole for what might be a hoax or scam.   It's not ideal, but it's simple.

And because there is no giant pile of money, there is problem of how do you spend a giant pile of money.

As mentioned, I am building projects on all viable platforms, NXT is one of the top contenders from my analysis of the available options.