Indeed, it's very obvious that ICO administrators fit the definition of "administrator" in FinCEN's 2013 guidance. They are in the business of issuing virtual currency and have the authority to redeem it. This is clear because ICOs and the associated tokens are
completely centralized. Ripple is similarly centralized. It had a closed-source centralized repository. It was open-sourced well after the network was live. Even thereafter, all Ripple clients were set to trust Ripple Labs' validation nodes by default -- fully centralized. FinCEN addressed this specifically in 2013:
The second type of activity involves a convertible virtual currency that has a centralized repository. The administrator of that repository will be a money transmitter to the extent that it allows transfers of value between persons or from one location to another.
This conclusion applies, whether the value is denominated in a real currency or a convertible virtual currency.
But these examples don't lead me to the same conclusion as you -- that the BSA applies to pre-mines, founders rewards, etc.
As you point out --
A handful of coins are not impacted, Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Monero come to mind. These are coins where all the new money supply is generated by persons own "computing or manufacturing effort" and have no "central depository and no single administrator".
FinCEN made a clear distinction between those who create virtual currency
and use it to purchase goods and services (users) vs.
those who create virtual currency and sells those units for real currency (money transmitters).
Pre-mining or insta-mining does not require a central repository or single administrator, and early miners are still obtaining coins by computing/manufacturing effort.
Similarly, a founders' reward is literally part of the decentralized protocol. No central repository or single administrator required, and (in Zcash, for example) miners still obtain most of the block rewards through computing effort.
