How would you design a cryptocurrency to solve the initial distribution problem? Imagine you are in 2009, when nobody knew that it could succeed as money at all.
Like I wrote in a comment before, I don't know of the solution. I'm just pointing out that bitcoin, by virtue of being attrative for early adopters (deflationary, big rewards for early miners), will also suffer from extreme concentration of wealth. Which ultimately might cause its downfall.
The solution is probably not popular with this group. Bitcoin will pave the way and show everyone what a truly global cryptocurrency can do. Once world awareness/acceptance is obtained create a new coin with a different proof of work that can be mined on a global scale by everyone all at once. Introduce the coin with simultanious sales of the new ASIC type device worldwide that mines this new coin.
In a way this is inevitable. In 3 years 75% in 7 years almost 90% will have been mined. Bitcoin will not replace fiat in that time frame. Cryptocurrency is superior to fiat but do you really expect the powers that be to sit back and adopt it as a world currency. They will try to crush it they will fail but probably will slow widespread adoption. When it is realized that cryptocurrency cannot be stopped attention will focus on replacing bitcoin with something new. If you missed the bitcoin wagon it is far better to reset the playing field then to give 90% of all the worlds wealth to those that happened to mine the first cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin will never die and will always have value probably significant value but I doubt it will be the dominant cryptocurrency of the future. Think about it if you first learn about bitcoin 7 years from now would you support a cryptocurrency that had been nearly 90% premined by a select elite for a world currency or a new coin that everyone had a chance to mine.
This makes no sense. How can another crypto-currency come along, and go from nothing to 'everyone can mine' right at the beginning. Any currency is going to have to go through some kind of adoption phase. Everyone can mine BTC now, in fact people are, by the boatload - look at the hash rate! BTC has built userbase, value, recognition, reputation and continues to go from strength to strength. For every person that jumps on board there are several others who heard about it and ignored, dismissed it. So the number of people who know about BTC is some multiple of the number of people who actively have or use BTC. This is the one, this is it. Its TCP/IP happening now, technically not necessarily the best solution, many other alt currencies make claims to better than BTC in a variety of ways. Uptake and momentum set BTC way ahead of the competition.
I think BTC 'banks' will form, they will be the 'NAT' of bitcoin. They will handle processing millions of transactions a second, only transferring stuff out onto the blockchain when they need to deal with other BTC banks. They will solve the issue of instant micropayments without wating for confirmations. This is how BTC can become real money that people are used to. It doesnt stop BTC being used by individuals using the block chain for transactions like they do now, its just an extra layer.
How do you pull the plug on bitcoin, it would be like pulling the plug on TCP/IP!
If the govt(s) start an official crypto currency, how is that going to work. First it has the undesirable quality of belonging to a govt, who of course get the jump on mining from the start, and which govt is gonna do it, and how are all the other govts going to feel about that? Are they all going to try and launch their own. Clinging to the relic of geographical boundaries? Seems somewhat inferior already.
I'm sure there is stuff I haven't thought of, and probably some black swan will come floating along any second to usurp all rationality, but in the meantime you position yourself to take advantage of the most likely outcomes, and you hedge to make sure the black swan doesn't destroy you.
Bon voyage!