What is interesting to me is that in the (IMO very unlikely) event that Nxt has technical promise, then as soon as the code is open-source it will be possible to create Nxt-clone using the
spin-off mechanism and immediately bootstrap the clone with a more efficient distribution than Nxt-original.
You bring up a good point about distribution though. If nxt did create a major breakthrough, it would certainly be nice to capitalize on that with a bitcoin based distribution, rather than speculating on a new altcoin.
Would your bootstrapping protocol work with nxt even though the coins are so different?
I see no reason why the spin-off mechanism shouldn't work with every alt-coin. We are discussing the protocol details in the
spin-off thread if you are interested. Adrian-X has posted a 1 BTC bounty for source code that builds the snapshot.bin files that become Block 0 in the spin-off.
I think in time we will see the idea of launching "new alt-coin currencies" as economically flawed: money is more about the legitimacy of the ledger than the properties of the payment system. Important open-source payment system innovations will be integrated into bitcoin anyways, and closed-source innovations will not be trusted. I believe people genuinely interested in innovation will be better served building new protocol layers that work on top of bitcoin, launching experimental spin-offs, or working towards side-chains or tree-chains. But, alas, the promise of dumping a huge premine on a frenzied market seems too big a carrot.
Interesting. As you say, "we will see" since people can vote with their wallets.
The good thing about your idea is that is still allows for several competing
currencies even though distribution is based on bitcoin.
I wouldnt want there to be just one blockchain to rule them all.
But the distribution benefits bitcoin holders at the same time.