In my opinion, CryptoNote is doing something much more important than trying to make a quick buck. It's a shame that XMR supporters are so obsessed with their coin and hash rate that they deny strategic development. Come on guys, you do have the highest hash rate, but it is 80% botnets. What's the point in trying to secure a rotten apple? CryptoNote is trying to change the world, while you are interested in your investment payoff. That's puny and unworthy.
I disagree with you.
Hal Finney said that if a CryptoCoin that had no real advantage over Bitcoin and were to overtake the value of Bitcoin it would create a disastrous situation where all the CryptoCoins would lose their value. His reasoning was that if investors (1) saw that another coin can overtake Bitcoin, based on hype and manipulation alone it would call into question "
can any type of faith based currency (2) actually be a store of value".
This store of value is important because many projects die fast if people are not committed to their security, maintenance and continue research and development. If the "store of value" idea was to be undone via a clone without true merit and reason to exist, the investors would be unwilling to invest in the clone because the precedent has now been set that any clone on hype alone will eradicate their investment. As people stop investing their money into miners or buying the coin itself, people see their value fall and begin to stop investing the most important asset in the world, their time. Once time stops being invested into a project the project ceases to exist.
This has nothing about making a quick buck. I don't invest in alternative coins often and only moved onto Monero because I saw merit. However if Monero were to fall due to clones that offer very small incremental changes to the code, then I would be a fool to invest my time, money and energy into that competitor because I know the precedent has been set, another coin will be along shortly to ruin that coin, with small incremental changes. This is the crux of Hal Finney's argument.
Only coins that offer a massive advantage over the other market participants should be able to take value from a market leader, because that functionality is really adding a true addition to the marketplace. Obviously Bytecoin fills this role, however due to the 80% premine it was automatically unsuitable to be the market leader for a CryptoNote coin, Monero was born to be the restart of the unfair premine. Monero's first and vital innovation is one of the marketplace, Monero offered the first public release of a CryptoNote coin that was not premined.
This is the crux of my argument; if there are thousands of CryptoNote clones all fighting each other for market share, with no clear leader, where does the investor park his energies and capital? Without a growing capital base the developers leave to better pastures. Under the current vision of the CryptoNote "team" they are in fact creating a rotten apple, a confused market with no clear leader. It's a mess.
Up until Monero I saw a future of about three true market participants; Bitcoin, Ethereum and a Storage based coin. However it is entirely reasonable that Ethereum will also be that storage based coin.
Monero adds onto that list as the fourth participant.
(1) [Miners and people who buy the coin are both investors]
(2) [All CryptoCoins are faith based, they rely on the will of the people to maintain value, rather than a Government taking control and manipulating the market to keep prices at a set standard]