From the Nxt wiki:
http://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/FAQ#The_original_stakeholders_are_hoarding_their_coinsDoesn't this centralize the Nxt since most coins are in the hands of about 75 individuals?
Most of the original stakeholders have been distributing coins to others as donations, bounties for development and promotion, exchanges, etc. See the next section for more detail. By contrast, Bitcoin is five years old, and half of the total supply of Bitcoin is held by a little over 900 people (source ).
The original stakeholders are hoarding their coins
The genesis block contains 73 transactions, distributing all 1 billion Nxt among the original stakeholders for the platform. Analysis of the weekly balances in those accounts, performed by wesleyh, shows that the balances have all dropped significantly:
Nov 24, 2013: 1,000,000,000
Dec 1, 2013: 622,209,864
Dec 8, 2013: 406,016,313
Dec 15, 2013: 305,742,843
Dec 22, 2013: 265,220,001
Dec 29, 2013: 248,241,416
Jan 5, 2014: 148,913,050
Jan 6, 2014: 139,681,005
It is possible that coins are simply moving between accounts and are still being "held" by the original stakeholders. However, many of the stakeholders have been actively promoting the development of Nxt by providing donations and bounties to programers, debuggers, translators, and more. Details of some of these bounties and projects can be found in this Google spreadsheet and in the original stakeholders bounty discussion thread on nextcoin.org.