What incentive is there for individuals/organisations to create alt currencies?

[mr_random]

Financially, what do they stand to gain from all the long, hard effort they put into it?

I guess they can mine from day 0, but that still doesn't give them an advantage over any other early adopters.

[Matthew N. Wright]

but that still doesn't give them an advantage over any other adopters.

It doesn't? So the 1 million coins that the first few hardcore miners mined isn't an advantage to say, you or I? By buying and selling bitcoins, we're making the first miners very rich.

[mr_random]

but that still doesn't give them an advantage over any other adopters.

It doesn't? So the 1 million coins that the first few hardcore miners mined isn't an advantage to say, you or I? By buying and selling bitcoins, we're making the first miners very rich.

Sorry missed a word there. i mean the other EARLY adopters.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Sorry missed a word there. i mean the other EARLY adopters.

Well, unless it's something that's particularly well known (like Paypal or Amazon for example), it's highly doubtful that it would have many early adopters. From what I read, these cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin spinoffs are starting small and building up slowly. In practice as far as I can tell, they have only a few early adopters before the coins are already distributed in a way to make them wealthy. From then on, it's not really "early" if you come into it, especially if it's a total pump and dump like most are.

[markm]

There are so many already created that you don't need to create them anymore, you can just pick a few that have ridiculously low difficulty and quietly mine them, some of them even CPUs work fine for still. (For example GeistGeld, you can merged mine it alongside bitcoin, not that your CPU will get you much bitcoin, but you can pick up GeistGeld day in and day out with a CPU until larger miners finally remember it exists and add it to their merge.

(Eventually even ASICs will be only borderline profitable, so eventually the extra few percent you can make by merged mining more chains will start to be noticed...)

-MarkM-

[CoinHoarder]

I'm sorry to be rude, but this is the stupidest question ever asked..

I'm not like the others that have special interests and will try to sway your opinion. I mean... I have special interests of my own, but I'm willing to tell you straight up.

The incentive is to make money.

Some blatantly just create their ALT coin to make money, and some put a lot of effort into supporting, growing, and developing their ALT coin......... to make money.

The answer at the end of the day is MONEY... it makes the world go round.

[Sunny King]

Making money doing the work would be nice, but without making the money I would still be proud that I did the work, for free. That's something that certain people don't believe in, that's fine. But I am me.

That's why ppcoin was released without premine nor tax. Right the developers don't have any advantage over the early miners and investors, that's okay with me. If my work ends up freeing people from oppression in some way, whether I made money from the work is totally secondary.

I still remember liquid's motto "Because he who dies with the most stuff, wins"

[mr_random]

I'm just thinking if there was more incentive for individuals to innovate with these alt currencies we would see a broader spectrum of coins. PPCoin seems to be the only coin that's tried to do something drastically different.

What would people think about a new coin where the creator receives a small percentage of all mined coins for his efforts? e.g 5%.

As a disclaimer, I cannot program and don't even fully understand bitcoin so I wouldn't be entering into such an endeavour myself.

[Etlase2]

What would people think about a new coin where the creator receives a small percentage of all mined coins for his efforts? e.g 5%.

It's called SolidCoin and/or Microcash. Current number of people using it: probably about 3.

[Sunny King]

What would people think about a new coin where the creator receives a small percentage of all mined coins for his efforts? e.g 5%.

It's called SolidCoin and/or Microcash. Current number of people using it: probably about 3.

Clearly devcoin and some others pays a lot more than 5% to the devs, yet it proclaims itself as 'ethical' and I don't see many people badmouthing them for it.

Although I am not for this approach but if they can sustain themselves this way all power to them. I think the singled-out bashing on solidcoin is a little bit unwarranted unless people don't play the double-standard.