Thanks for covering this. The article doesn't mention the price, which is a big deal right now. According to Coinmarketcap, the value of 1 AUR now is $15.09. You mention each Icelander getting about 31 AUR, so this is over $450 worth of value for every single Icelander. That's a significant incentive for everyone to sign up. Good luck to Icelanders and to the team behind Auroracoin, exciting times ahead!
> Auroracoin is a cryptocurrency for Iceland. It is based on litecoin and is 50% premined. The premined coins will be distributed to the entire population of Iceland, commencing on midnight 25th of March 2014.
If we discount the 10,500,000 premined coins, we get only 94,451 "wild" coins, increasing slowly until March 25th. In the "best" case, the circulating coins well increase x112. A less successful hand out to a 10% of the population will increase it only x12. With a 1% it increases x2.
I expect a big drop in the value, approximately 112-fold, 12-fold or 2-fold according to how successful the hand out is. And that's the optimistic scenario, because now it has a very small market and it's easy to manipulate the price.
Prices of cryptocurrencies are notoriously hard to predict in the long run. If it can maintain this price though, you're right - it will provide a very strong incentive for people to go and claim their AURs. That should help with the adoption inside Iceland too.
Was not having one global currency - one of the main reasons to introduce currencies in the first place? All those "national" currencies will be susceptible for 50%+1 attack.
