Namecoin is one of the most heavily hashed altcoins, thus possibly less easy to attack than some of the other choices.
In order for bitcoin to function usefully as a store of value for use as collateral against which to borrow buying power, it needs to be used in conjunction with something that can serve as a medium of transmission of borrowed buying-power. Altcoins seem pretty good candidates for performing that medium-of-transmission function...
If it is necessary for someone borrowing to buy a car to be sent millions upon millions of namecoins, enough to clear the order book, plus millions upon millions of the next best altcoin, enough to clear its order book too maybe and so on, just to keep their bitcoins safe and sound as collateral still growing in value, then I suspect the altcoins used for that might not be as cheap when the folk who bought them put them back on the market so that someone else can be transmitted the buying power to buy a car, or the first car buyer wants to buy a house...
-MarkM-
Your general premise may be correct but IT being Namecoin is not true.
Namecoin has several HUGE problems:
1. It's leeching off of Bitcoin and is produced with basically zero cost.
it does not hurt Bitcoin so what is the HUGE problem here? Actually this is a very good thing.
2. Domain name squatters total like 5 guys that have taken all the good domain names.
developers tried hard to prevent this but most people were just not interested enough
please note namecoin is not only about domains:
http://namecoin.info3. There is no real interest in it. For christ's sake it still doesn't even have GUI interface.
sure it does
4.
?
rant rant rant
The lack of developers is what ails Namecoin the most. I own quite a few NMC but I won't even consider selling them as long as there is a 0 in front of the decimal point. Namecoin has incredible potential, all it takes is somebody with the right skills to notice it and to make it happen. If it goes down I'll go down with it, no problem.
this