Yes, but it doesn't answer the OP's question. What if government, official bank or other strong entity with virtually unlimited resources starts a fork (something like Ecoin for those who watch Mr. Robot)? I wouldn't call such event improbable.

I strongly assume that a strong entity would prefer to create a new coin from scratch instead of donating huge amounts of value to existing bitcoin owners.

> virtually unlimited resources

Having resources doesn't matter, it's a hype-based economy

It is much too early to judge Bitcoin Gold. The launch has not even taken place yet. They forked a few weeks ago, the developers are currently mining privately, and the public launch will take place in a few days. People criticize the pre-mine, but it's only 0.6% of the total supply of coins. Perfectly reasonable IMHO.

Most people don't think that pre-mines are reasonable at all. That's a good way to know which coins are scams. Why do they deserve 0.6% of a total market that could be worth billions of dollars, exactly? Because they changed a hash algorithm and released a marketing website?

That used to be the prevailing opinion. Pre-mined coins were generally regarded as scams or pump-and-dumps. But after Ethereum which is almost all pre-mined sharply rose in value, there seems to have been a change in public perception. This is what opened the gates for the new generation of altcoins, also known as ICOs. They don't pretend that they're anything else than pre-mined. In fact, the huge sums that the pre-mined coins are sold for is used for marketing as a measure of interest in their coin. It's a strange new world.

Why did Airbnb founders deserve X% of the shares of their company that could be worth billions of dollars? Because they made a stupid simple website to rent out your apartment? Same question, same answer. We live in a capitalistic world, I think it is reasonable that people try to launch for-profit ventures. Ethereum did something equivalent to a pre-mine + instant sale: they created the initial ETH supply out of thin air, and immediately sold it for BTC to investors.

Startups aren't comparable to cryptocurrencies. There is serious resistance to pre-mining in the cryptocurrency world.

Perhaps cryptos simulate "religions" whereas a single idea fragments in tens-of-thousands of variations? Look how many sects Christianity has after the Protestant Reformation "Hard Fork"

Not in the sense meant here.

Litecoin is a fork of the Bitcoin core codebase, but its blockchain is not rooted in the Bitcoin blockchain (i.e. Bitcoin owners did not automatically inherit Litecoin at the time of that fork).