How does one claim ownership of Nxt funds once the genesis block is mined? They just put in the password? Since there's no signature confirming the initial TX, I suspect anyone else can also attempt to redeem the coins (in the same way redeeming an output like "OP_SHA256 OP_EQUAL" can be stolen by a miner, as there is no way to validate intended outputs).
I will run a web site. Everyone will enter the hash of their secret phrase and a Nxt account id to claim nxts to. The software will calculate SHA256(hash) to check it matches any of the hashes attached to the sent bitcoins. Obviously, only a legitimate sender knows the hash. Then I will publish collected data here for community approval. Yes, I will know the hashes but I won't know the secret phrases. Thus I can't claim someone's else nxts, if I attempted this the legitimate owner would easily prove his ownership by publishing the secret phrase.
What happens to the BTC sent to your address? You keep them?
After the genesis block is approved I will use them for further development of the project (advanced features and services).
Why not take all the public keys from transactions to your 'exodus'-esq address and assign them values at launch? All a user needs to do is import her privkey for the address they sent funds from and you have a more decentralised setup phase which doesn't require using a hash in a private database stored as a 'public message'.
Nxt keys are not compatible to Bitcoin ones. Nxt uses Ed25519 and there is no a way to convert a Bitcoin key into a Nxt key.
On an economic tangent, you say there's no need to send large amounts to your address, but if the amount of Nxt you receive is proportional to the amount of BTC you send, you end up with the same wealth distribution we have in Bitcoin now (or similar enough - those who can pay more will, and thus control a similar-ish chunk of the Nxt pie).
Is it bad? Nxt is a descendant of Bitcoin.
Economics is not my area of expertise. I can say nothing about the issue.
Then why are you trying to design a currency?
I follow Satoshi's vision of the best currency. Nxt gives a way to skip Bitcoin's inflation age and jump straight to the time when there is 21,000,000 coins. Do I need to be an economist for that?