Think of it like this. You want to mine some BTC, do you power up your 386 and wonder why you aren't mining BTC? No, you go out and buy some $5k rig beast to mine BTC in a pool. Nxt is like that, but instead of buying depreciating electronic equipment, you spend a couple $k on appreciating Nxt and then you can forge. When everything is up and running, the block rewards will significant.
The way I understand it is that, you must invest into this currency for it to have any real worth for you. And effectively, your fiat investment, is your proof of work. Then, your proof of stake takes over and you are rewarded for that stake through forging. However, if you can't invest, and have 4 NXT like me, than the estimation timer for forging a block is 70000+ days!! I'll be dead by that time, and probably my children as well...lol. The NXT wiki spells it out best, "The amount of coin you can earn is dependent upon the number of coins you hold, the total number of coins "active" on the network, and the transaction fees included in blocks on the blockchain."
well yea but 4 nxt isn't even worth 1/2 a USD. of course you are going to have to wait a while .
tell us your address, we can manage to get you more than 4 nxt
5689282937605855476
Thank you. Reading about POS was just so different than the POW altcoins. But now I realize that the investment is in the currency. Again, thanks all for helping me understand this. I'm very new to cryptocurrency, and already moving in to a 2nd generation of coin has me hustling to catch up with nomenclature and whatnot. You guys could have treated me harshly, and you didn't, and instead gave me the answers I was looking for. I really appreciate that more than anything. Keep up the good work in the community. I'll seek opportunities to be more involved as well.