Doesn't really matter if a coin been mined or just created out of the thin air and distributed on some fancy way, if there are no real world services for it.
^ This. Mining is fetishized in this community, to me it's just a means to an end. People forget what attracts the mainstream to Bitcoin is not how the coins are created but the end use of it.
You are probably right, but to get there bitcoins was supported by many miners (not investors investing their money on dev good words) who invested in hardware, time, electricity etc... real investors (and shady one as well...) who created company to use and support bitcoins.
Non-minable coins rely mostly on unreliable dev and investors, there is basically no future to them, because anybody going to these coins are only interested in short term profit (and no mining means also no string attached... you don't need to buy or sell hardware or anything... ), there is nothing in that which would bring confidence in those coins to make them mainstream... (well even if you reinvent again and again silkroad... )