Initial Coin Distribution Importance

[jmasterson]

How important is the fairness of the initial coin distribution for new coins?
Which of the coins now, in your opinion, are distributed fairly?

[tokeweed]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

[Bobsurplus]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

[tokeweed]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.  And not to mention there's real interest pouring in.  Millions and soon to be over a billions worth of interest from VC's.

[Bobsurplus]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.

and that's why the distribution doesn't matter that much.

[tokeweed]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.

and that's why the distribution doesn't matter that much.

Yes that's what I said.

[Bobsurplus]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.

and that's why the distribution doesn't matter that much.

Yes that's what I said.

I know man.,... I just been blazing mad weed tonight so my brain keep farting.. My bad!

[tokeweed]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.

and that's why the distribution doesn't matter that much.

Yes that's what I said.

I know man.,... I just been blazing mad weed tonight so my brain keep farting.. My bad!

Nah it's cool.  You can do it again if you want.  Let's make happy little nested posts and see how long we can make it last.

[Bobsurplus]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.

and that's why the distribution doesn't matter that much.

Yes that's what I said.

I know man.,... I just been blazing mad weed tonight so my brain keep farting.. My bad!

Nah it's cool.  You can do it again if you want.  Let's make happy little nested posts and see how long we can make it last.

You mean keep brain farting? If so its gonna smell pretty bad in here in a bit. Maybe I should twist up a fatty and call it a night.. yeep.. fatty and a massage from the wife and Im off to bed.. later dude. I'll see ya around im sure.

Stay 420 strong my fellow pot brethren.

[tokeweed]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.

and that's why the distribution doesn't matter that much.

Yes that's what I said.

I know man.,... I just been blazing mad weed tonight so my brain keep farting.. My bad!

Nah it's cool.  You can do it again if you want.  Let's make happy little nested posts and see how long we can make it last.

You mean keep brain farting? If so its gonna smell pretty bad in here in a bit. Maybe I should twist up a fatty and call it a night.. yeep.. fatty and a massage from the wife and Im off to bed.. later dude. I'll see ya around im sure.

Stay 420 strong my fellow pot brethren.

What?  You going?  I thought you're staying.  Tell your young beautiful hot wife to let you stay on for a bit.  I'm pretty sure she's ok with it.  Come on, let's make more nested posts, it'll be fun!

[Bobsurplus]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.

and that's why the distribution doesn't matter that much.

Yes that's what I said.

I know man.,... I just been blazing mad weed tonight so my brain keep farting.. My bad!

Nah it's cool.  You can do it again if you want.  Let's make happy little nested posts and see how long we can make it last.

You mean keep brain farting? If so its gonna smell pretty bad in here in a bit. Maybe I should twist up a fatty and call it a night.. yeep.. fatty and a massage from the wife and Im off to bed.. later dude. I'll see ya around im sure.

Stay 420 strong my fellow pot brethren.

What?  You going?  I thought you're staying.  Tell your young beautiful hot wife to let you stay on for a bit.  I'm pretty sure she's ok with it.  Come on, let's make more nested posts, it'll be fun!

Sorry man.. the wife calls so i gotta answer

[tokeweed]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.

and that's why the distribution doesn't matter that much.

Yes that's what I said.

I know man.,... I just been blazing mad weed tonight so my brain keep farting.. My bad!

Nah it's cool.  You can do it again if you want.  Let's make happy little nested posts and see how long we can make it last.

You mean keep brain farting? If so its gonna smell pretty bad in here in a bit. Maybe I should twist up a fatty and call it a night.. yeep.. fatty and a massage from the wife and Im off to bed.. later dude. I'll see ya around im sure.

Stay 420 strong my fellow pot brethren.

What?  You going?  I thought you're staying.  Tell your young beautiful hot wife to let you stay on for a bit.  I'm pretty sure she's ok with it.  Come on, let's make more nested posts, it'll be fun!

Sorry man.. the wife calls so i gotta answer

Can't blame you man.  She is hot!

[Bizmark13]

There aren't that many altcoins out there that can claim to have good distribution but there are many that have poor distribution. An extreme example is Bytecoin (BCN). It was probably mined by a very small group of people from its launch in July 2012 to its discovery on these forums in 2014. During that time, the Bytecoin community was absolutely tiny and exclusively consisted of deep web users. The end result was that 82% of the coins were owned by a very small group of people and thus Monero (XMR) was later launched as a fair relaunch. Monero is currently more active than Bytecoin development and community-wise and despite their comparable market caps, is usually viewed as being the more successful coin of the two.

Then there are coins like NXT which had much better distribution than BCN but were still not 100% perfect. With NXT, 73 initial stakeholders got all of the NXT during their initial distribution with those who had invested the maximum 1 BTC getting the lion's share of this. However, NXT's distribution has improved greatly since its launch and is now comparable to that of Bitcoin's. NEM was created to be the fair relaunch of NXT although unlike XMR, NEM was designed to use brand new code. While it's probably too early to make any real comparisons with NXT, NEM's market cap is currently much smaller than NXT.

While BCN isn't completely dead, it's obvious that the coin's distribution prevented it from achieving widespread appeal. Had Bytecoin not been ninjamined, Monero would probably not exist today. When it come to judging altcoins, distribution is certainly a factor and if extreme enough, then it could potentially break a coin (see Tenebrix as an example of a coin which flopped due to the dev having premined most of the coins) but then again, it's really just one of many other factors to take into consideration as well. My general belief is that if the technology is good, then a coin will survive whether or not it's distribution is ideal. However, this is only really true up to a reasonable limit and if this limit is passed, it's likely that a clone might just rise up and take it's place.

[tokeweed]

There aren't that many altcoins out there that can claim to have good distribution but there are many that have poor distribution. An extreme example is Bytecoin (BCN). It was probably mined by a very small group of people from its launch in July 2012 to its discovery on these forums in 2014. During that time, the Bytecoin community was absolutely tiny and exclusively consisted of deep web users. The end result was that 82% of the coins were owned by a very small group of people and thus Monero (XMR) was later launched as a fair relaunch. Monero is currently more active than Bytecoin development and community-wise and despite their comparable market caps, is usually viewed as being the more successful coin of the two.

Then there are coins like NXT which had much better distribution than BCN but were still not 100% perfect. With NXT, 73 initial stakeholders got all of the NXT during their initial distribution with those who had invested the maximum 1 BTC getting the lion's share of this. However, NXT's distribution has improved greatly since its launch and is now comparable to that of Bitcoin's. NEM was created to be the fair relaunch of NXT although unlike XMR, NEM was designed to use brand new code. While it's probably too early to make any real comparisons with NXT, NEM's market cap is currently much smaller than NXT.

While BCN isn't completely dead, it's obvious that the coin's distribution prevented it from achieving widespread appeal. Had Bytecoin not been ninjamined, Monero would probably not exist today. When it come to judging altcoins, distribution is certainly a factor and if extreme enough, then it could potentially break a coin (see Tenebrix as an example of a coin which flopped due to the dev having premined most of the coins) but then again, it's really just one of many other factors to take into consideration as well. My general belief is that if the technology is good, then a coin will survive whether or not it's distribution is ideal. However, this is only really true up to a reasonable limit and if this limit is passed, it's likely that a clone might just rise up and take it's place.

What do you think about something like Ripple?  Obviously it's distribution sucks.  But will it succeed?

[Bizmark13]

There aren't that many altcoins out there that can claim to have good distribution but there are many that have poor distribution. An extreme example is Bytecoin (BCN). It was probably mined by a very small group of people from its launch in July 2012 to its discovery on these forums in 2014. During that time, the Bytecoin community was absolutely tiny and exclusively consisted of deep web users. The end result was that 82% of the coins were owned by a very small group of people and thus Monero (XMR) was later launched as a fair relaunch. Monero is currently more active than Bytecoin development and community-wise and despite their comparable market caps, is usually viewed as being the more successful coin of the two.

Then there are coins like NXT which had much better distribution than BCN but were still not 100% perfect. With NXT, 73 initial stakeholders got all of the NXT during their initial distribution with those who had invested the maximum 1 BTC getting the lion's share of this. However, NXT's distribution has improved greatly since its launch and is now comparable to that of Bitcoin's. NEM was created to be the fair relaunch of NXT although unlike XMR, NEM was designed to use brand new code. While it's probably too early to make any real comparisons with NXT, NEM's market cap is currently much smaller than NXT.

While BCN isn't completely dead, it's obvious that the coin's distribution prevented it from achieving widespread appeal. Had Bytecoin not been ninjamined, Monero would probably not exist today. When it come to judging altcoins, distribution is certainly a factor and if extreme enough, then it could potentially break a coin (see Tenebrix as an example of a coin which flopped due to the dev having premined most of the coins) but then again, it's really just one of many other factors to take into consideration as well. My general belief is that if the technology is good, then a coin will survive whether or not it's distribution is ideal. However, this is only really true up to a reasonable limit and if this limit is passed, it's likely that a clone might just rise up and take it's place.

What do you think about something like Ripple?  Obviously it's distribution sucks.  But will it succeed?

I really don't know that much about Ripple so it's kind of hard to say. As I understand it, their distribution is controlled by Ripple Labs who distributes the XRPs in a centralized manner while keeping a large chunk for themselves (making it similar to a premine). I suspect many people will already see it as being flawed due to this fact alone but personally, I think it could work. Many people don't like the idea of a centralized entity creating coins out of thin air and selling them or handing them out to people whom they see fit but if the technology is good, then 9 times out of 10, it shouldn't fail. Whether or not Ripple "succeeds" really depends more on the technology and how many people/businesses it can manage to get on board than anything else.

Another thing is that XRP's role as an internal currency rather than one used for traditional purchases and/or functioning as a store of value isn't really comparable to the other premined/pregenerated coins that we've seen so far so I guess that's something to consider as well.

[ronald98]

Did Dogecoin and Litecoin have fair distributions? I have not read any distribution complaints about them yet and they have both been near the top for over a year.

[Lorenzo]

Did Dogecoin and Litecoin have fair distributions? I have not read any distribution complaints about them yet and they have both been near the top for over a year.

I would say that they are definitely "fairer" than most. Both coins had public launches with a lot of people mining in their first few days. Litecoin had a mild instamine where half a million LTC was created in the first six hours but many of these early miners have probably already sold their coins (its creator coblee definitely did). Now that there are almost 40 million LTC mined, this only affects 1.5% of the total supply so it's pretty much irrelevant at this stage:



Link: http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=a_massive_investigation_of_instamines_and_fastmines_for_the_top_alt_coins#litecoin

Dogecoin's chart looks even better. It was launched on December 2013 and I remember it already had many people mining it on 4chan by mid to late-December. I'd be very surprised if it had any severe problems regarding distribution:





Link: http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=a_massive_investigation_of_instamines_and_fastmines_for_the_top_alt_coins#dogecoin1

[Bobsurplus]

Not that important.  Like anything, a project's team is more important, millions in funding, and the idea itself.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Look at btc, Satoshi owns fat stacks but nobody cares.

Yup.  That didn't stop it going from nothing to $230 per coin in 6 - 7 years, did it?  It's not that bad actually.

and that's why the distribution doesn't matter that much.

Yes that's what I said.

I know man.,... I just been blazing mad weed tonight so my brain keep farting.. My bad!

Nah it's cool.  You can do it again if you want.  Let's make happy little nested posts and see how long we can make it last.

You mean keep brain farting? If so its gonna smell pretty bad in here in a bit. Maybe I should twist up a fatty and call it a night.. yeep.. fatty and a massage from the wife and Im off to bed.. later dude. I'll see ya around im sure.

Stay 420 strong my fellow pot brethren.

What?  You going?  I thought you're staying.  Tell your young beautiful hot wife to let you stay on for a bit.  I'm pretty sure she's ok with it.  Come on, let's make more nested posts, it'll be fun!

Sorry man.. the wife calls so i gotta answer

Can't blame you man.  She is hot!

You been stalking my wife dude? 

[Pecunia non olet]

How important is the fairness of the initial coin distribution for new coins?
Which of the coins now, in your opinion, are distributed fairly?

It is important if you want to make a successful project. Coins with bad distro don't go very high because smart people (the ones with the money) don't buy it. Litecoin wouldn't be where it is now if it wasn't fairly distributed.

From all the coins i have been looking at i see these as failry distributed: Litecoin, Unobtanium, Vertcoin - that's it. Maybe doge, maybe digibyte, maybe megacoin, maybe clams (but these all go with a questionmark) Bitcoin wasn't fairly distributed (stealth, private premine, ninja launch)

Well, the distribution certainly affects market sentiment a lot a long time into the future.

[Lorenzo]

How important is the fairness of the initial coin distribution for new coins?
Which of the coins now, in your opinion, are distributed fairly?

It is important if you want to make a successful project. Coins with bad distro don't go very high because smart people (the ones with the money) don't buy it. Litecoin wouldn't be where it is now if it wasn't fairly distributed.

How about NXT? Or Ripple? Or Darkcoin/DASH which was supposedly instamined? These coins still have very high market caps.

From all the coins i have been looking at i see these as failry distributed: Litecoin, Unobtanium, Vertcoin - that's it. Maybe doge, maybe digibyte, maybe megacoin, maybe clams (but these all go with a questionmark) Bitcoin wasn't fairly distributed (stealth, private premine, ninja launch)

Is there any proof that Bitcoin was actually premined? Didn't Satoshi insert the message "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" into the genesis block to prove that he didn't mine a ton of coins before it was released?

It might be accurate to say that Bitcoin was ninjamined because Satoshi and Hal Finney were the only ones who were mining it during its early days, however this was almost certainly unintentional and beyond Satoshi's control. Back then, very few people knew about cryptocurrencies and most of those who did realize the potential of decentralized blockchain-based currencies were the same people who Satoshi directly took inspiration from to create Bitcoin. Also, it was announced on a public mailing list from the very beginning.

Well, the distribution certainly affects market sentiment a lot a long time into the future.

I agree with this.