There was NO valuation prior to the Genesis Block.
Once the NXT's distributed, they were immediately traded on 1BTC / 1M rates, with a x47 multiplier for these who invested 1 BTC, that just kept pushing the price further within a very short amount of time, without any actual innovative features provided by Nxt.
Here at least we have a predictable ROI for everyone.
How can there be a multiplier if there was NO prior valuation? 0.000001 NXT/BTC was the first market rate.
When NXT was first offered for sale at a price for .000001 BTC, the cost of goods sold was 0.000000021 BTC/NXT. This is a 4762% markup over the original purchase price. The fact that no price per NXT was announced during the pre-sale has no bearing on what the original cost was of what was being resold.
+1, exactly what I was about to say.
This valuation jump (caused by artificial shortage, created by the abrupt fundraiser ending) is exactly what caused every investor and his dog to be in panic they are missing "the next BTC" train, and subsequently driven the the valuations to where we see them at this point, without any actual tangible proof of value up to this very moment, and without any clear indication it will hold once Ethereum or any other competing platform enters the market.
The donations dropped off and most people were calling scam. Lets assume it went till Jan 3rd a few more dozen people decided to throw some btc in. The results would have been the EXACT SAME. 150 people might as well be 73. The difference is, Nxt would be 2 months behind on development, promotion, community building, etc. It's a null argument. And really all of this is based on hindsight. Clearly we can see NOW that Nxt is worth something. At the time there was no way to tell if it was a scam, if it would end at one new feature, if the proposed features would be fatally broken or dysfunctional. It just so happens that its doing everything right and everybody wants a piece. It's just a completely fallacious argument that you're making.
So if they wanted to end early, why not make an announcement that the presale will be ending early, so if anyone wants to invest, they need to do so by the specified new deadline, a day or two later, maybe? There was no reason to abruptly end the sale with no advance warning, other than they wanted to make sure that no new investment would come in to dilute existing positions.
Sorry if this seems off-topic in this thread, but as SyRenity points out, NXT keeps being promoted as an example distribution where everyone who wanted to was allowed to invest in the pre-sale, while complaining about Ethereum and Mastercoin, and this is clearly not the case based on evidence existing in the forums.
It highlights the importance of clearly stating the terms of an offering and either sticking to those terms or giving plenty of advance warning if changes are to be made.