“ . . . often associated with pump and dump schemes.”
https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/what-is-a-premine
“Okay, so now, after more than a year, looks like . . . [Dnotes has] turned out to be a good coin. Congratz and good luck with it.”
Post 3 here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/annnotednotes-celebrating-dnotes-3rd-birthday-forum-now-open-470155
I have no agenda here; and to prevent becoming bogged down in squabbles about what constitutes a ‘fair launch,’ let’s just lump together pre-mines, instamines, ICOs, developers’ funds, etc.
Hundreds and hundreds of altcoins were launched in late 2013/early 2014. Have a quick look here (and look for mentions of IPOs):
https://bitcointalk.7org/index.php?topic=588413.07
Mining hadn’t, at that point, become big business; and although the number of people who could profitably mine was a tiny percentage of the world’s population, the group was far far larger than it is today.
Moreover, the number of exchanges (speculative-trading!!) had increased dramatically.
And the actual process of coin creation and launch had been de-mystified (‘coingen’!).
Consequently, many of the altcoins launched at that time were utter trash, and most of those have, by any fair definition, failed.
(And the debate over Nxt and Ripple raged the whole time.)
The worst group of these coins was that of the pre-mines. Consequently, by mid-2014, crypto geeks had come to tar all pre-mined coins with the same brush.
Now, though – late 2015 – things really have changed!
Two things are notable. The first is that established and trusted developers, like Vitalik Buterin, exist. The second is that the development of cryptos – certainly the 2.0s – is now a long and costly process.
Conclusion: the suspicion of the early pre-mine alts was justifiable, and all ‘non-fair-launch’ cryptos still warrant very careful analysis; but it seems that (a) a 'pre-mine' can succeed, and (b) we have entered The IPO Era.
P.S.:
I found the Youtube post below while writing the article. It’s Coinmarketcap in December, 2013. Well worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6vd5cap9Jk
Mark (IndiaMikeZulu), Australia
Thanks Mark, I hadn't been back to see the beginning of the thread in a while, that was a pleasant surprise.