The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that you also need virality. There are multiple coins released every day [1]. Most of these coins go nowhere.
Why are so many coins released? Quite simply, most coins are forks of Bitcoin/Litecoin/etc with minor tweaks. Occasionally, you get a truly new coin based on something new, but most simply tweak the coins per block, the difficulty re-targeting rate, the starting difficulty, the block time, etc. Coingen.io exemplifies how simple this is. Of course, there are exceptions, such as the upcoming Etherium [2], the first Turing complete cryptocurrency (as far as I know, at least).
Despite that, most coins basically fail. Sure, they receive hashing power, and some even get onto exchanges. Most of them, however, don't really go anywhere.
So, yes, it is relatively easy to create and launch a coin. It is a bit harder to launch a coin that makes it to an exchange. It is harder still to make one that also sticks around and stays in the public consciousness (such as dogecoin).
Finally, let's say you have a great idea for a new coin. The way some people previously got rich by creating a new coin was to premine the coin. Basically, one would mine the first x number of blocks, before releasing it. This still happens, but is now much more often frowned upon. So, to get rich off of creating a coin, you basically would need to premine a coin, and convince others that you had a good reason to premine it [3]. This absolutely still happens, but is becoming tougher to pull off.
So yes, you could create aarondfcoin. Yes, you could probably release it and get hashing power thrown at it. But, would you make money doing so? Well, that requires a bit more effort. Keep in mind that there are hundreds of attempted alt currencies for every dogecoin success.
That said, yes, there is still room for success here, but it usually requires more than just creating aarondfcoin. The virality aspect is the more important aspect, at the moment.
[3] Yes, there are a still a number of ways to make money off of releasing a coin that doesn't involve premining (or appears not to involve premining), but that is a topic worthy of its own thread.
What is funny about premining critique for the altcoins is that Bitcoin is the most egregious example of premining, Satoshi in effect having premined 5 to 10 % of current coins. Sure, you may say at the time there was no choice but to keep hashing until others joined the party. Still the end effect is still the same - a large amount of BTC is controlled by an unknown entity.
Litecoin apparently was one of few altcoins to avoid premining that is everyone (who followed BTC forums that is) got off on equal footing.
To me the funny thing is there is enough consternation over this to have an official term for it.
Satoshi, whether a group or individual, invented Bitcoin and planted the seeds for its success against all odds. Now that it's huge everyone is regretting not getting in early, but I see no reason why the creators and early adopters don't deserve their spoils.
It's nice that Litecoin decided to start everyone on equal footing, but let's not fool ourselves: that's an adoption tactic not altruism. At the end of the day Litecoin is the most successful of the copycat digital currencies but it's still a copycat.
You make all the great points, but forget to mention scarcity. The most extreme I've seen is fourtytwo42 [1].
The scarcity combined with an extremely low difficulty in the start is a huge incentive for miners to flock to a new altcoin, and exaggerate its perceived value.
Based on what I've read, it is meant to be a memory-hard coin, so I would assume GPU (and, if like previous coins, an AMD-based card), or possibly CPU to start. That said, I've not yet read enough, so take the above with a grain of salt.
Its scrypt based proof of work function, its a litecoin alt-coin derivative. It offers little over other scrypt based alt-coins. A UK company has announced they will be selling scrypt ASIC miner appliances in 2014.
If this cryptocurrency survives, it will be uneconomical to mine by the commoners sometime this year.
Why are so many coins released? Quite simply, most coins are forks of Bitcoin/Litecoin/etc with minor tweaks. Occasionally, you get a truly new coin based on something new, but most simply tweak the coins per block, the difficulty re-targeting rate, the starting difficulty, the block time, etc. Coingen.io exemplifies how simple this is. Of course, there are exceptions, such as the upcoming Etherium [2], the first Turing complete cryptocurrency (as far as I know, at least).
Despite that, most coins basically fail. Sure, they receive hashing power, and some even get onto exchanges. Most of them, however, don't really go anywhere.
So, yes, it is relatively easy to create and launch a coin. It is a bit harder to launch a coin that makes it to an exchange. It is harder still to make one that also sticks around and stays in the public consciousness (such as dogecoin).
Finally, let's say you have a great idea for a new coin. The way some people previously got rich by creating a new coin was to premine the coin. Basically, one would mine the first x number of blocks, before releasing it. This still happens, but is now much more often frowned upon. So, to get rich off of creating a coin, you basically would need to premine a coin, and convince others that you had a good reason to premine it [3]. This absolutely still happens, but is becoming tougher to pull off.
So yes, you could create aarondfcoin. Yes, you could probably release it and get hashing power thrown at it. But, would you make money doing so? Well, that requires a bit more effort. Keep in mind that there are hundreds of attempted alt currencies for every dogecoin success.
That said, yes, there is still room for success here, but it usually requires more than just creating aarondfcoin. The virality aspect is the more important aspect, at the moment.
[1] See the bitcointalk announcement forum https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0
[2] http://ethereum.org/ and the whitepaper: http://ethereum.org/ethereum.html
[3] Yes, there are a still a number of ways to make money off of releasing a coin that doesn't involve premining (or appears not to involve premining), but that is a topic worthy of its own thread.