One thing does not necessarily exclude the other, there might be a market both for dedicated asset issuing alternative blockchains and for blockchains such as bitcoin that mainly are used for buying and selling of products and services but including virtual asset issuing as an additional feature -- Phelix, by the way, do you have a link to the list of commands available for the namecoin virtual asset software?
available commands:
print_help()
display_info()
pay_dividends(nmcAmount)
transfer_names_to_address(quantity, "address")
update_names() # will update all names in wallet
<ctrl-c> # exit
issuing is a separate script
currently thinking about paying out dividends in btc via shared private key or setting a field in the stocks...