I reloaded all those variables in my mind and worked through it finally. I confirm gmaxell is incorrect (but without peer review so caveat emptor). I can see now possibly a deeper reason why he thought I was incorrect, but afaics he apparently didn't see why that reason is irrelevant because it is sort of non-intuitive or not obvious. I'd rather not share my finding at this time, as I think it is very valuable. Appears to me Ethereum's proposal is not optimum.

That is necessary but not sufficient by itself. Which comes first the egg or the chicken?

There is no "the egg" and there is no "the chicken".

There is an egg, and there is a chicken.

It is growing again, and the growth in transaction volume proceeded the recent price increases.

That wasn't so much my point though, as it was that DOGE was technically almost identical to BTC and LTC yet its reception and trajectory has been very, very different. It is impossible to separate the effect of technical differences from marketing and even just timing, serendipity, etc. 

The growth was probably because the large holdings had diminished so the usage as a currency could begin to dominate the value again. But then the speculative investors will come back in and try to ruin it again.

Thus it has the same technical design error as BTC and LTC, in that it doesn't dilute those large holdings that don't move. There must be a symbiotic balance. If you let speculative investors design your coin, you will never get a balance.

And it's difference was it put the currency in small amounts in many users hands. It wasn't just marketing, but rather the network effects of the marketing which created technically both the egg and the chicken.

It has always been about distribution. Always. No coin has done it correctly yet.

Most people should work for an income. Only a small fraction of the population is well suited to the stress of speculation.

Edit: I am not well suited to be a short-term speculator. I am well suited being a long-term value investor a la Warren Buffet, and remember he invests for income not for stock appreciation.

Marketing is not the same as advertising. Advertising can be a component of marketing but it certainly need not be. DOGE wasn't particularly advertised although some money has been spent on things like race cars.

Certainly not.

I just cautioned technologists not to excessively focus on technology, because it is extremely apparent (from the controlled experiment of essentially identical technologies having enormously different outcomes) that other factors are also having a huge impact. Likely in my opinon huge enough to drive success of inferior technologies and doom better ones to failure. Even if in this case "inferior" and "better" refer to networking/viral effects. A cute dog picture and seeding in the right demographic can be tremendously important (with corresponding mistakes being equally important negatively), and these are just examples of a theme, not at all an exhaustive list.

Afaik the distribution difference of DOGE was not technological, but that doesn't mean a distribution difference can't be technologically driven.

And I agree seeding in the desired demographic is critically important.

Not arguing in favor of byteshitcoin, but if they built the protocol with the sole intention of a premine dump...well then the code must be shit. Monero being built on a code that was developed for no other reason than for a scam premine dump must make Monero based on complete garbage code.

Saying every coin based on CN is a scam , by developers who are only out to scam, makes it stupid to invest in Monero which is based on bullshit scam code whose original authors intended to use it for nothing other than a scam, not a serious coin.
Bytecoin and cryptonote's stories have huge holes in them, some of the clone coins may also be related to them. No need to expend so much energy pointing that out, and proclaim XMR is the ONLY legit coin based on CN. Anyone even half serious will want to invest in a newer coin with a higher market cap, more profitable mining and active transparent community. Why run around like a cult trying to brainwash the community when you can just let them discover the benefits of XMR on their own. You seem like scared bagholders trying to pull off a pump and dump. First the big scare was BCN, now the XMR cult is scared of BBR and rather than build XMR your focus is to tear down BBR.

Honestly I think you are a giant bagholder, who used the datacenter at work to mine a shit ton of XMR and is hyper defensive trying to protect XMR even if it is a clone, released by who knows, raped by those with mining software magnitudes better than the public. If your intent was to build on the CN protocal and make a legit coin with a future, why not start over. One minute blocks are something the XMR community was against..why did you stick with XMR and not release a new coin that adopted the ring sig anon rather then take over a coin based on code written to scam that was released by a dev related to the initial scam who named it a shitty name and ignored the community and used one min blocks...could it be you were already a bagholder and wanted to make the illusion of a shitcoin clone into something valuable so you could dump it? I don't know, but it's why I mine and dump rather than invest and support the community and the devs. If you are sincere (which I doubt) forget everything about CN and focus on XMR. Forget bashing all other coins, and focus on the benefits of XMR and the personal privacy and freedom it provides it's users. Enough with the negativity, build something instead of tearing everything else down!
For what it's worth, I'm just some dumb fuck who wanted to invest in XMR, but the community leaders and cult folowers act so much like all the other shitcoin coordinated pump and dumps I can't. Being a strong libertarian, and not dumb enough to buy into the DRK get rich scam I'm left with CN..which would make XMR the go to coin, if it didn't have a cult like community acting like a pump and dump with more fear of other coins than belief in it's own.