Just a quick observation, Bitcoin is an experimental alternative "currency".  The "experimental" part of it means that people can tinker around with it or (since the whole point of BitCoin is that all the rules are baked in at the start, of course with exceptions) branch off different alt chains to see if there could be an incremental improvements that can be made.  The fact that the alternatives appear to be inferior to BitCoin (so far) speaks incredibly highly to how well the original design was thought out.

I recognize that as soon as Real Money is involved that "experimental" tag tries to get removed rather quickly (after which people start getting jealous of any alternatives, remember that fiat currencies behave the same manner) but as long as things don't get out of hand I welcome experimentation on incremental improvements to what was a surprisingly strong design.