Another useful property of this technique is that it makes the bitcoin blockchain robust to 51% attacks.  

In the very unlikely event that the bitcoin network came under an unrelenting 51% attack, people would simply use the most promising clone.  Since users have the same slice of that pie too (unless they traded), there is no need to "panic trade into litecoin," for instance.

It is becoming clear that the value of bitcoin comes from the community's shared belief that the blockchain is an accurate ledger.  Since this is the most secure and redundant digital file in the history of mankind, it would be very difficult to destroy (just think how hard it is to get all those embarrassing photos off Facebook LOL).  The blockchain is like DNA that can rebirth our decentralized money again and again and again.  

The largest remaining technical threat then becomes a crack of the secp256k1 curve to permit fast solutions to the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem, but even this would not be catastrophic (and about as likely as fusing atomic nuclei to create gold in a cost-effective manner in my opinion).