Theoretically I agree with you...
The main problems i see are
1) Raped & pillaged by botnets
2) XPM price tanked like a biatch after the GPU failure
3) Would have opened it up to a lot of serious miners
I understand your points.
1.) My only rebuttal is that Litecoin was CPU only at its inception and look at it now. I agree as long as it is CPU only, botnets will have a huge advantage due to economies of scale. However, you could say the same about GPU mined coins... every computer also has a GPU, there is no stopping a botnet from utilizing them. Both Bitcoin and Litecoin were and/or are currently mined with botnets even on GPUs. If Bitcoin and Litecoin can survive an era of botnet domination, then so can Primecoin IMO.
2.) I would not worry about short term price fluctuations. As you know, cryptocoins are highly volatile and cryptocoin traders are largely inexperienced. Most of them suffer from herd mentality, they see the price falling so they say to themselves "oh no, I better get rid of it!" I see good things in Primecoin's future for the simple fact it is currently cpu only, not to mention the innovation and its contribution to the field of mathematics. In the long run I think my opinion on this will be proven correct, but we shall see. Guess which other coin started out as CPU for a while, then came to GPUs and was a big success? Hint: It has risen over 2500% in the past year.
3.) I agree it would have opened Primecoin up to more serious miners... I have no rebuttal here. Well.... actually I guess I do. mrtlt has proven it is possible to mine Primecoin on GPUs. It is now not a matter of
if Primecoin will be GPU mined, but
when it will be GPU mined. For now it stays off limits to large GPU farms, but the day will come (likely sooner rather than later) when that is no longer true. Again, if Litecoin can make it through the same scenario, there is no reason Primecoin can't as well.
Wow.. I have seriously just talked myself into buying some Primecoins in my last two posts. I honestly do not own any at the moment, but I am actually kind of excited about an ALT coin for the first time in a while. That is saying a lot, because I have been less than impressed with just about every ALT coin release this year.