I just found out about bitcoins last weekend, and ran the bitcoin miner, and then found out that it will take my 2.4GHz dual-core laptop 10 years to generate a bitcoin at the currently-established difficulty (without using my GPU, presumably).
I know, right? Now that everyone's excited about Bitcoin, the exciting part is over. Kind of a bummer.
I see a unique opportunity here for a company with an existing virtual goods economy or something similar such as Listia.
They create a new genesis block and new Bitcoin-protocol clients and publicly announce they're going to turn the spigot on (announce the genesis block) a few days later. The twist being that they will accept the new chain's currency within their existing economy.
They not only get a lot of publicity but effectively become a central bank for their forked currency, which allows them to compete with Classic Bitcoin via the par value they establish.
I haven't thought this through, it's just a wild idea. What are the flaws in this plan? Would this just actually destroy value? Is this the expected long-run for Bitcoin anyway?
