In my opinion, introduction of innovations through cloning is the number one threat to bitcoin.

I think there will be a clone that includes at least the following features:
a) mining for regular coins
b) mining for bond coins (i.e. tradeable securities that the blockchain converts into regular coins at a future date)
c) splitting of bond coins into derivative coins (i.e. tradeable securities that the blockchain converts into regular coins at a future date if certain block chain conditions are met (e.g. difficulty levels, transaction volumes). A set of derivative coins which spans the entire domain of future conditions is equivalent to a bond coin.)
d) Threshold-protected wallets (wallets that allow for daily send limits and an unlimited emergency cash-out address. Both the send limits and the cash-out address would be specified by the user at wallet creation and could not be changed subsequently.)
e) other features people haven't thought of yet.

It would be much better for digital currency if these features were developed as a fork in the bitcoin blockchain rather than as bitcoin clones. Development of successful clones undermines faith in the ability of digital currencies to store of value. Development of a successful forks allows pre-fork currency holders to have their wealth grandfathered in. Forking preserves the ability of digital currencies to store value, while allowing for innovation.

Thats exactly the point. Mining is used to secure the network. Its not useless or wastefulness.

And all in the control of one source, why even bother? The current money systems do this just fine.

What if that could be done in a decentralized manner?  The one central server is just a proof that this can be done in some way - but this is not the goal.  What I would expect is that you can have a timestamping protocol with multiple super-nodes (not unlike those that are proposed as adaptations of the bitcoin protocol to handle bigger traffic) with many checks and balances, some of them probably outside of the protocol (just like now outside of the bitcoin protocol you have distribution of the block chain 'checkpoints' into bitcoin clients).  Control over timestamping does not mean 'all control' over the system - the timestamping server does not need to know what it is signing.

Short Answer:
Bond coins facilitate financial contracts which span a long time period.

For example, in this thread [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=18205.0] a company is issuing private bonds to fund a project. The company promised to pay 1 bitcoin on Dec 31, 2011 for every 0.8 bitcoins invested by bondholders today. Currently, the company needs to accumulate current bitcoins to pay off this debt. Suppose that the company accumulates bondcoins with a maturity of Dec 31 instead. Based on the poll I made here [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=25705.0], bondcoins with a half a year maturity might sell at a discount of 10% (i.e. 0.9 bitcoins trades for 1 half-year bondcoin). If so (and assuming the company has a constant revenue stream), the company would save around 5 percent of its financing costs by accumulating bond coins rather than bitcoins. This would reduce the interest rate the company faces from 25% to 19%.

This is just one example. Essentially, the same logic applies to any long-term contract demoninated in bitcoin.

Longer Answer:
A second point of bondcoins is facilitating the creation of derivative coins. Derivative coins address issues with compensating large merchants for adopting bitcoin and helping merchants manage bitcoin exchange rate risk. My ideas about derivative coins (aka contingent claims) are described here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19130.0


Regarding the threshold, that is a programming question. I'm not a programmer. I bet the current developers could manage it if they set their minds to it, however.

I think if you look at Bitcoin as a protocol, and not as a single technology, you'll see that the likelyhood of a clone is almost zero. By protocol I mean like SMPT for e-mail or HTTP for websites is a protocol. After more than two decades, we still don't have a "clone" of email. The protocol itself has improved, and many services have built up around it, but the "e-mail" protocol is still there. I think the same will happen with Bitcoin: why bother making something completely new when you have a large networked system already there to improve and build upon?

No, I don't think it is a threat. Any bitcoin clone pushed by a corporation will be centralized, and will not have the intrinsic advantage of bitcoin. It would simply be another Paypal.

Care to explain that?

Here you go:
 - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9493.0