We've refined the idea of "spin-offs" as alt-coins that are launched with a pre-mine exactly equal to the unspent bitcoin outputs at the time the "snap shot" of the blockchain was taken.
Exactly equal or proportional? The latter seems fine.
Right again, smooth. You have a good eye for detail and logic. I corrected the post.
It's an interesting point. How is the constant of proportionality determined, and does 0 count?
There's an argument that if the alt-coin is inflationary, then the allotment for bitcoin addresses should be in proportion to the number of alt-coins that exist when they are claimed. That's if you don't want to penalise bitcoin owners for waiting (as has been mentioned in some posts). There is also an argument that they
should be penalised for waiting.
My comment concerning the initial distribution was addressing the perceived unfairness of the distribution; why should we award nakamotos and other btc moguls with mountains of altcoins?
So I tried to say that wouldn't matter since that initlal distribution would quickly be replaced by another distribution that would reflect the value of the altcoin, as indifferent holders would dump their coins and interested parties would pick them up again dirt cheap. The price would then adjust to the demand.
In practise I'd expect most bitcoin owners to ignore the alt-coin launch, either through shear ignorance (not seeing launch publicity), or else feeling they can't be bothered to track every alt-coin that comes along. If, after a few years, the alt-coin succeeds and comes to their attention, that's when they might claim their new coins. Unless you address this, you will find you are actually rewarding those supremely indifferent bitcoin holders.
You may also find it is a source of instability for the alt-coin. The effective number of alt-coins could suffer large increases at any time, due to previously passive bitcoin owners making alt-coin claims and then dumping them to buy more bitcoin. Even if they don't dump, and hold onto their claimed alt-coins, the currency would surely be very inflationary due to these influxes. Of course, we might hope they would manage their claims so as not to crash the currency they are acquiring, because that would devalue their own new holdings; but people aren't always smart, and anyway they might see the alt-coin as a threat and want to disrupt it. In particular, if the alt-coin uses proof-of-stake, I wonder if this could be a source of 51% attacks.
So for these reasons it might be best to make the proportion of alt-coins per bitcoin reduce over time. Give the biggest rewards to those who support the alt-coin earliest.
I'm not advocating this; just putting the idea out there. One drawback is that it's more complicated. Another is that it diminishes one of the virtues of the spin-off idea, which is that it reduces the threat of the alt-coin to Bitcoin. Spooking Bitcoin investors and venture capitalists by destroying its value could poison the well for all crypto-currencies; a fantastic alt-coin that caused a bitcoin crash could make everyone unwilling to trust any crypto-currency as a store of value in case the same thing happens again. So the way spin-offs preserve bitcoin value is important.
Also, when a new user adopts the alt-coin and becomes active with it, they necessarily increase demand for it, and the coin's value goes up. This deflationary effect may offset the inflationary effect of the new alt-coins generated when they claim, so it the inflation might not be as bad as I thought above. This is only true if their behaviour is broadly the same, and spend/hold the alt-coin in similar proportions to their bitcoin; and it won't be true if they dump and return to bitcoin.
The other ludicrous assumption here is that you know exactly what addresses Satoshi owns.
Please provide a list and amounts with proof. don't get it wrong though or else there could be a lot of angry people showing up making the accusations of you stealing.
Well, rather than targeting Satoshi personally, you could limit claims to coins from recent transactions. For example, with a hard cut-off you could only give alt-coins to bitcoin users who had been spent or bought in the previous year, in proportion to their spending/buying. These active users are arguably the people who will most benefit the new alt-coin. Or, you could use a softer approach, by awarding more alt-coins to the newer transactions with some more or less complex formula. You don't need to know or care who owns the coins.
(Again, not advocating this, just pointing out some more possibilities if you don't keep a fixed proportional premine.)