He might be important for some corporate folks who are thinking on getting involved in this new blockchain and distributed stuff business, but not for us here.

...and if he said that then what? Personally I trust more the former NXT guys than that Hoskinson bloke.

This part is surely bollocks. I'm not a big monero fan, but BS is BS. I've seen the launch from the very beginning and it was properly communicated, well known event. Everybody who wanted was able to take part.
BTW I still have a wallet what contains a few dozens of moneros what I've mined in the first few days with a doggy dualcore laptop. The emission curve was also subject of a long debate.

You are dreaming mate . Fiat doesn't need gold or anything "to backup" since 1971. Those are backed only by government regulations and law (AKA promises) what supposed to guarantee the value of that piece of paper .

To OP:

You can find the max supply for coins on coingecko. Click on the coin and then you will get a detailed information page.

I'm not "investing" in alts. I'm gambling with those . Many people here doesn't seem to realize that 90% of the alts have no real value apart from some immaginary value established by the miners, traders and fanclubs. The remaining 10% have some value, because of traditions, inventions/usefulness and very rarely because of real word exposure. If you "investing" money in something can be considered as "game chips" in hopes of making a profit that's exactly like playing in a casino. "Invest" accordingly .

Maybe he's right, but maybe this it the same "more cheap coins" or "buy it until cheap" aproach what we used to see in trollboxes from bagholders .

The New Deal (1933-38) in the States is a good example for state sponsored infrastructure projects what used public work, in the same time in Germany they did the same to get things back on track. Unemployment must be avoided in the future. Many jobs out there today can be done faster an better by machines in the near future. According to some forecasts in a few decades only 15-20%ot the currently needed jobs will be still available for humans, everything else going to be automated. But 80-85% unemployment would kill not just the economy but the society as well, so most of these people must be employed in some sort of real or Mickey mouse jobs, just to keep things going.

Community work paid by the state is an other option and in that case the state can get lots of things done with some relative cheap workforce, plus otherwise unemployed people will not get unused to the idea of working.

Actually babylonians invented the first forms of banking, then egyptians, greeks and romans further developed the idea. Roman banks were pretty much similar to modern banks. In India and China they also developed banks with similar functionality in the ancient times. The lombard banking houses just revitalized an ancient practice.

That's currently working on the testnet. ...as it's still clearly stated on both the getting started and the faucet page.

I agree with bryant. Maybe there will be some show trials for the small fry but the really big fish bought up the court systems, press and politicians across the globe long time ago. They are out of reach for the everyday man of mould :/.

Yep! It slowly going down and I'm expecting some correction after such a big rise in price.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd expect a correction as after such a sharp rise that used to happen. Otherwise the coin itself has a good potential.

I have ambivalent feelings. On one hand I'm waiting for it, as it will stirr up the market and it will be great fun, on the other hand I believe it will cause further centralization in mining.

If something sounds too good to be true it probably is. So if someone want to go for this offer I'd suggest caution and using a trusted escrow.

The devs (mostly NXT crew) are experienced guys and they delivered interesting stuff in the past, so I think the coin itself will be fine. What they failed to deliver in the past was the meaningful marketing, but now they said that will be all right.
Block halving is an interesting question as according to many that already priced, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some significant hype and maybe the start of a new bubble around this July.

Probably you can't expect massive ETH like profits, but personally I think a Waves investment will be somewhat profitable in the future... if they will really do some good marketing.

For example your quite biased "opinion polls" where you don't give an opportunity to disagree with your opinion without looking like a really ugly greedy pig are good examples .

You know, sometimes it's difficult to find out what is fud, what is pump, and what's the truth behind the big pile of BS what people keep  pouring here. E.g. I think the monero & co guys are right about DASH but they are just fuckin' annoying with their constant croaking about how flawed DASH is and how cool their coins are. The Rimbit and Leocoin guys are probably right when they saying that everybody can make a few bucks with their stuff, but they are also very annoying with their scammy hurray-optimistic crap.

Reading the Announcement board is the best what you can do. Look for new coins every few days and you can find out which coin will have a crowdsale and if it's worth to go for it.

OK... but what about known FUDers ? That's also a form of manipulating the price of a coin and used to be part of of a later pump (pushing down prices to obtain cheaper coins prior the pump). 

Not exactly true. A lot of scientific "facts" are theories based on deduction first and then generalization, but as these theories are the best working explanations currently, so everybody accepting those as facts, however no one ever seen, heard, touched or felt those things. Some of these things are not even measurable or observable just derivations from some statistical data. And this is the pure science. If you take a look at economy, philosophy, psychology, sociology, politology and such science branches you are arrived to the realm of religion .