Stanford. Indeed, this is centralization. But as others have mentioned, it's much more like "exchange your CPU time for equity in our security" than it is like "participate in our distributed, decentralized currency." No sustainable decentralized currency could use inputs like protein folding, SETI, etc.

Counterparty is really innovative, and this is a great way to leverage it. Unfortunately, it's really easy to confuse with typical altcoins which really use miners.

Well said. A lot of my time in forums is spent explaining the benefits of Counterparty. It is a fantastic platform that allows anyone with any skill set to create an altcoin, known as an asset or token in the CP world.

This is great because it allows our development team to work on features, rather than a blockchain and wallet system that can be very hard for a small team of 5 to maintain. Please read this page if you havent already about the pros and cons of Counterparty http://foldingcoin.net/fldc-vs-alts/