In the long run, those technical stuff will not add value to a coin. The only thing that matters is the useability outside of the cryptoworld. Though I bought DRK early, hit the jackpot, I dont think DRK will be one of the very long term coins. Starts with the name: what (relevant) company will ever accept something called "darkcoin"? Total anonymisation will also lead to non-acceptance rather than acceptance in the "real" world. Everyone seems to love it, I think it will hold back the coins in the end. Thats just my opinoin though, I will still buy those coins for the short/medium term profit.
But you are right, as I see it Naut is basically BK. If he would lose interest, there is nothing much thats left. High risk investment for sure, but thats the case for all cryptos. he might however, push the coin and the community in the right direction, look at his last posts. I would not underestimate the importance of the person at the top. There is so much money involved in crypto, that the role on top has to be filled - sooner or later - by someone business-related and not a tech-guy or some unprofessional community member (hint:BC, feel free to disagree).
Hi! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
DRK to me is an important part of my crypto portfolio (early adopter as well...), because I think there is a market for digital cash, which it basically is (unlike BTC, NAUT etc, because of the open blockchain). That market is different and it`s users won`t care about the "dark" in name (they probably even like it...).
I`m no Darkmarket user, but from a political (libertarian) perspective, I support the idea of anonymous wealth transfer.
NAUT (and BTC) on the other hand go for the mainstream, for people who do not care much about privacy in the first place.
A possible idea for NAUT in this space could be to turn the NSF into an exchange by itself, instead of relying on multiple other exchanges (kind of like DGEX with NXT, where you can only trade NXT/BTC). Kelly could provide "deposit insurance" there (very important psychologically in my opinion) for people (moms and pops) depositing their NAUT with it (should be easy to implement, if you renounce some liquidity, i.e. 1 day or 12 hours for insured deposits).
That would be something unique, but maybe it get`s to deep into the banking business (licenses etc).
Anyway, I agree with you that NAUT investors basically speculate on Mr Kelly being willing to move this project ahead.
Let`s see.
EDIT: As he is a Wall Street guy himself, I`d appreciate more detailed infos on how he plans to make NAUT the go to Crypto for Wall Street people.