Quote from: jmw74 on September 02, 2014, 09:20:47 PM

Quote from: aminorex on September 02, 2014, 08:59:54 PM

Quote from: jmw74 on September 02, 2014, 08:08:44 PM

Quote from: Este Nuno on September 02, 2014, 07:19:55 PM

I've always thought that any sufficiently funded team of professionals could blow Bitcoin out of the water in a short period of time. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet to be honest. Probably still too niche.

Blow bitcoin out of the water with what? Pump and dump scams? What else could possibly motivate anyone to run an expensive marketing campaign?

Good question. It would probably be a Google-esque give away, in which the boon is granted in order to create an ecosystem in which a novel business model is profitable. For example, a financier-driven competitor would be similarly open-source (but community-oriented only in the degree required to avoid an immediate fork before the ecosystem was up and running) and be optimized for lending, leverage, and scripting contracts. Ethereum, anyone? They are funded by Goldman-Sachs alumni. Their marketing has been brutal in its consequences for BTC. Since their cronies run the governments in North America and Europe, prosecution for securities law violations seems questionable.

Either the creator controls it or they don't. If they don't mind it being neutral, they might as well just hire the bitcoin devs. Unless you think there's something wrong with bitcoin's ledger. Seemed like a fair distribution to me.

The reason alternative coins don't build off the existing bitcoin ledger is because it doesn't permit pump and dump.

Just no.

In case of Monero, NXT and co. who have a completly different codebase, how would you even do that?

Other good reasons against that are:
1) Exchanges will get most coins.
2) A lot of coins are already lost.
3) Satoshi would get a shitload of coins.
4) Mark Karpeles gets a shitload of coins.
5) Most users would prolly just dump them till the value is 0.
6) Shitload of coins in hands of investors who did nothing for the coin itself.

Why should people who did nothing for the coin even get them? Miners get there share because they help to secure the network for example....