Bitcoin Forum

On CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko how do we know when looking at a coin that it has been pre-mined?

Is there any legal legitimate reasons for pre-mining or it is a scam?

Has bitcoin been pre-mined by Satoshi himself?


People say Ethereum has been pre-mined but Ethereum has a infinite supply so why there's a incentive to pre-mine it  ???

Pre-mine does not apply to POS coins? Only affects POW coins?

I come from a time of bitcoin clones.... Usually, a premined clone had a huge block reward for one of the first blocks written right in the sourcecode... The dev would give a huge block reward to block 1-5 (for example), then mine those blocks himself/herself... So by just looking at the sourcecode, you could usually see a clear indication for a premine.

Wether or not it's fair: that's up to you... Maybe the dev wants to do a quick dump of his coins and get rich while leaving the bagholders behind... But maybe he wants to have some coin for promotion or translation?

As far as bitcoin was concerned: yes, satoshi mined most of the early blocks, but i wouldn't consider it premined.

Most people used to say 1-5% premine was a reasonable amount for a developer to keep as compensation. Much more than that and I'd say it's starting to look a bit weird.

A lot of devs probably keep less and I think the ethereum premine was for the ico also? As they got $30M from it (I think).

As said above it can probably be seen in the source code or should be declared somewhere (tbh if the project is a scam the coin might go to zero anyway).

Every crypto and tokens based on PoW are premined, and the reason could be anything because that is how things are going in the crypto market for a very long time.

And not every pre mined coin is scam but most of them eventually can be scam even after it is legit for a while.

Depends on your defenition of a premine... If you see a premine as a dev mining a huge amount of coins before anybody else has the chance to mine some... Then no, not every coin is premined.... A lot of them are, but defenately not all of them.

I can't speak about those tokens tough... I was never interested in that ecosystem.

Completely decentralized cryptos can be trusted because they are not going to exit scam and all others are holding potential scam anytime.

That a coin or token is premined by the developers does not necessarily mean that that project is a scam, at least I know some project which I have come a long way with which were initially, there coins were premined and they are still very much in the game of crypto today, any project that wants to turn scam can turn scam whether coins or tokens are premined or not, so this is to clearly explain that projects come out with premined coins or tokens is not a way to determine if that project is a scam, the activities of the owners or developers of the project in question will tell if the project is or will turn scam in the future.

Just watch their announcement of the project start date and the first block date, if the first block was before the announcement, it can be categorized as pre-mined.
Its fair if they give us clue why they do that, example Development Funds or Liquiditation Purposes.

As far as i know Bitcoin isnt premined, but Satoshi mine the beginning block because no another miner at that time.

Due to my research ethereum can premine, but 70% of the premine ethereum is scam

Read their ANN thread, coin specifications or in white paper.

If they hide those information as they plan to do shady price manipulations, you can check explorer to investigate. Check the genesis block #0, #1 to find out premined coins.

Check the coin movements from big addresses from the start of one blockchain. Those addresses are owned by developers or internal teams or early investors. They have internal news and any big movements from them can give you signals for future price movements on the market.

Is there like a easier newbie finding it out way instead of looking through time consuming complicated whitepapers and plans?

Check the block explorer of the coin, and check block 1, usually if the number is big, that is their premine. Just type in their search bar the number 1, and it will show how many coins they have. If there is no premine, usually, the amount at block 1 is the mining reward per block. So should be small if no premine. You can confirm it by checking their technical specs. If they mention premine or no premine.

From there you can't tell, you will need a block explorer then look at the Genesis blocks and quantity of coins should tell the story, and easy way of knowing for newer projects is through the whitepaper which indicates how much coins have been premined.

If too many coins have been mined relative to the total supply, certainly a scam but if all is done in good will think of this has an incentive(payment) for work put in to bring project to where it is....

I believe so but some of his premined coins haven't been touched and satoshi being absent dev we can't know because his the best to give some of these answers.

I personally often take advantage of a project's website instead of reading a lot of reviews in whitepapers that obviously take up a lot of time, worrying about being cheated or not, whitepapers can also be faked in terms of new projects.

White papers are not helpful if scam developers hide details of their premined coins.

With public ledger, you can check hidden things with block explorers. Scam developers can not hide their premined coins on block explorers and can not hide their coin movements from those big addresses.