Correct.
Interesting ...........
It's a PoS system.
1 billion coins were generated in the Genesis block.
The fact that there are less now is because some were sent back to the Genesis account and are gone forever.
Always wondered why CMC showed the total coin supply as being slightly lower than 1 billion.
So who made the mistake of sending coins back to the genesis account? And I thought the passphrase of the genesis account was discovered (wasn't it the opening sentence of 1984?) so coins sent to it should be recoverable, no?
EDIT: Just logged into the genesis account and saw a negative balance. Was expecting to see a balance of 0 NXT. Now I can see why those coins aren't recoverable...
Yes, when an account has a negative balance, it cannot transact. That's why the passphrase doesn't matter and is actually shown on blockchain sites: http://www.nxtreporting.com/?ac=NXT-MRCC-2YLS-8M54-3CMAJ
I believe a few coins were sent as a test in the beginning, some people did some "wishing well" transactions and some people accidentally sent them.