What we know empirically is that over 5 years, 3 crashes, and $600,000,000 of unrecoverable mining costs, bitcoins have diffused across our user base and the resulting distribution has been logged to the blockchain.  By tempting you with unimaginable wealth during a rally and then threatening to take it all way during a crash, the free market has become a highly-efficient computer continuously refining the answer to the question “what is the right distribution of coins in a cryptocurrency?

If you thought you should hold more bitcoins, you'd buy more (within your means).  If you thought you held too many bitcoins, you'd sell some.  The distribution is efficient and has been tested over time and through the ups and downs of the bitcoin market-price rollercoaster.

Whether you think wealth disparity is good or bad, the truth is that it is inevitable.  The existing bitcoin distribution is the most efficient of all coins in existence.  Thus, by cloning any interesting alt (e.g., NxT) with the exact distribution contained in the blockchain, the freely-distributed clone naturally becomes superior to the expensive pre-mined version.  The clone automatically has the largest user base and a highly diffused distribution.

Why would you purchase NxT if you received bNxT for free?  Why would you think that NxT would succeed more than bNxT when bNxT automatically has a vastly larger user base should the merits of its technology prove useful?


My premise is simply that a bitcoin-blockchain-based clone will eat any promising alt-coin.  We will need empirical evidence to know if this is true.  It seems the idea is quickly spreading, however...