Or you could title the thread "What happened when someone started another chain" :p

My brief answer is that barring a revolutionary improvement it makes sense (from BOTH their own selfish perspective and the perspective of others) for each person to join the largest network if they are identical or similar.

It would already require a large improvement that was not possible to make to the existing bitcoin network.

The cleverest way to bootstrap (handle initial distribution) imo would be to allow people to buy in to the new chain by destroying their bitcoins in a specified manner to 'move' them into the new chain. But really that is just a way to allow people a one-way ticket into a breaking change version of Bitcoin, not a completely new system.

I think the cleverest way to bootstrap would be to pick a bitcoin block and then look at the bitcoin balances of that block and copy them to the new genesis block. Then every bitcoin user would become a newcoin user automatically and they would be inclined to at the very least install the new client, copy their private keys to it and sell their newcoins.

It might work, but you get a flood of newcoins that way (maybe not terrible I don't know). In the way I mentioned you get new newcoins whenever they are worth more than a bitcoin (because people will 'convert' bitocins then). But since bitcoin has no such feature it is a one way street and eventually you'll get the goodness of newcoin (whatever that may be) and the wide distribution of bitcoin and network effects.

Bitcoin isn't really working. I've been around here for a long time now and still don't see much growth in real economic activity outside of speculation. This might be fixable with a better distribution scheme.

IMO, cleverest way of handling initial distribution is to force miners to give away money to merchants who agree to accept the currency. Starting will small-time merchants and working up gradually to more important merchants as the currency becomes more valuable. Possible mechanism described here:
 
https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/74573.msg825936#msg825936

Of course, bitcoin tries to do this through voluntary participation already. It is clear fail. People don't volunteer to give away significant amounts. You need to compel them.

Great idea thanks   This would be a good way to bootstrap a test coin with no inflation to see how mining for fees only will pan out.  

Yes I can, that's what I'm doing now. Er, I assume they think it is in their individual interest.

This is the conundrum. Bitcoin has been around for three years and is improving. One day it will be pretty cool and ready for adoption by the world. The world says, "hey no fair you already own all the Bitcoins and we don't want to give you all our wealth to buy them, so we'll start a new blockchain with the same core." They then release a Worldcoin. Now rich people have been screwed in the past when money is re-issued and wealth is redistributed. They don't want this to happen again, so they will do everything they can to make sure they hold their money. The rich people buy BIG mining rigs so they can keep much of their wealth. So what happens? Who would trust Worldcoin run by banksters over Bitcoin that was built by grass roots efforts?

Bitcoin wins every scenario I can think of.

I used to think that this is an important indicator, but now I don't. Gold is also hoarded rather than spent (indeed, payment system based on gold are probably even less used than payment systems based on Bitcoin), but that does not mean it's not working. In other words, you have it backwards: the primary economic indicator is the hoarding, not the spending. If it wasn't hoarded, that would be failure.

There's no reason to set a specific timeframe for the spread of Bitcoin payment systems. Open source projects take their time and are not dependant on a particular company's business plan working out. I've been using linux for about 15 years now, so I remember how it was when it was less widely deployed. There were assorted pundits blabbering nonsense about how it has no future, because they did not comprehend the paradigm shift occurring around them. Most of them wisened up eventually (or at least shut up), but some continue even now, oblivious to reality. Rob Enderle and Bob Metcalfe are some of the loudest ones.

From functional point of view, the core features of Bitcoin, low transaction costs and decentralisation, are still present. Obviously, there are all kinds of other issues (some of which you have pointed out yourself), but they can be addressed in the future, and are not judged relevant by the current users. Also, competitors, even if they manage to publish working code, do not provide a compelling alternative (again, judged by the users).

So, pundits can just relax and let the innovators do their job.

Jeez, give it time. Gold was less valuable than iron at one time.

I think these threads are very useful. Every time I see one I think "*@&$!% not this thread again >:{ ", and them I'm always pleasantly surprised when it turns out to be directed to resolving that very problem.

Nice work.