Quote
It was a planned instamine. And it wasn't mentioned before launch, so in my books, that's a scam. Please don't ignore the facts:
2013-12-29: http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg03557.html
2 guys from Hawk Financial Group, Evan & Kyle, are asking on the Bitcoin Dev mailing list for "1 or 2 really good C++ programmer that is familiar with the bitcoin internals to help with a for-profit startup". They are planning to build a unique coin that is "not just a clone of the original Bitcoin code" but in stead "a merge-mined altcoin that will provide a very useful service to the whole crypto-coin ecosystem". They claim to have "detailed plans on how to implement it".
2014-01-18: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4596809
There were some issues at launch, so Evan said he would postpone the launch and would "definitely not" launch it in the next hours. But he did launch it a few hours later.
2014-01-19: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/dash/block.dws?000007d91d1254d60e2dd1ae580383070a4ddffa4c64c2eeb4a2f9ecc0414343.htm
Xcoin was launched. This was the emission in the first 72 hours of the coins existence: https://i.gyazo.com/fef5818649a839bb091c29e8b3722b7e.png This was the emission of the first 100 days: https://i.gyazo.com/3acc6ea5d90db13e51d95dac0e4b8fa2.png
At the moment, there are about 6 million DASH in circulation. There would be 84 million Xcoins eventually. (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4588082) Note that in the first hour, 500k Xcoins were mined. Due to the "quick fix" of the bug, not many people expected to launch a few hours after Evan said he would "definitely not" launch in the next hours.
2014-01-19: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4594074
Right after the launch, there were problems with the window binaries. Evan clearly was mining right from the start, as he offered 5000 Xcoin as a bounty for compiling the binaries.
2014-01-20: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4629218
After the emission of almost 2 million coins, Evan said that "now that everything is stable, I'll be posting later about the vision of this project and milestones!". Up until this point, only the "X11 hashing algoritm" was a known feature. According to him, it was "time to move on to actually implementing what I set out to do".
**2014-01-22//: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4654183
Evan releases his plans for XCoin. At this point, more than 2 million coins were mined.
Xcoin rebranded to Darkcoin and eventually to DASH later on.
Later on, some contradictions surfaced:
The emission schedule changed multiple times. The latest we heard is that the number of coins would be somewhere between 14 million and like 16 million DASH. (https://youtu.be/wIvcQIdSbIY?t=9m)
Evan said that this project was just a hobby he started while working on a full time job and coded Xcoin in a weekend. (https://youtu.be/wIvcQIdSbIY?t=9m17s)
Evan claims there were hundreds of miners if not thousands when Xcoin launched. (https://youtu.be/x5sNx7SMTP8?t=3m39s) Recent investigation showed that there were 124 IP addreses that were mining at the start. 115 of those addresses where Cloudhosting and Dedicated Servers, 9 of them seem to be private/users.106 of them were at Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud instances. (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12781520)
Conclusions:
Evan isn't acting alone, he had/has a team behind him right from the start. It wasn't a hobby. he had a plan to make a profit.
Evan had plans for his coin right from the start, but didn't release them until after the instamine
1.5 million coins were mined in the first 8 hours. Most of these coin ended up in his (and his friends) hands. It's very likely the 500k in the first hour were only mined by him with cloudhosting services.
He lowered the emission later on, to make his relative share of coins bigger.
How can this be all an accident (like Evan is always saying) and NOT be intentional?
Evan was looking for c++ devs for a "for profit startup" at the end of 2013 for the launch of an altcoin. How can you make a profit by launching an altcoin (and be sure to be able to pay your devs)? Answer: by premining and/or instamining. How he did it is pretty easy: * telling people the release would definitely not be in the next couple of hours and after that do launch it a few hours later * buggy windows binaries * a "code error" creating 500k coins in the first hour, >1.5 million in the first 8 hours.
=> DASH was clearly a planned premine/instamine.
2013-12-29: http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg03557.html
2 guys from Hawk Financial Group, Evan & Kyle, are asking on the Bitcoin Dev mailing list for "1 or 2 really good C++ programmer that is familiar with the bitcoin internals to help with a for-profit startup". They are planning to build a unique coin that is "not just a clone of the original Bitcoin code" but in stead "a merge-mined altcoin that will provide a very useful service to the whole crypto-coin ecosystem". They claim to have "detailed plans on how to implement it".
2014-01-18: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4596809
There were some issues at launch, so Evan said he would postpone the launch and would "definitely not" launch it in the next hours. But he did launch it a few hours later.
2014-01-19: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/dash/block.dws?000007d91d1254d60e2dd1ae580383070a4ddffa4c64c2eeb4a2f9ecc0414343.htm
Xcoin was launched. This was the emission in the first 72 hours of the coins existence: https://i.gyazo.com/fef5818649a839bb091c29e8b3722b7e.png This was the emission of the first 100 days: https://i.gyazo.com/3acc6ea5d90db13e51d95dac0e4b8fa2.png
At the moment, there are about 6 million DASH in circulation. There would be 84 million Xcoins eventually. (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4588082) Note that in the first hour, 500k Xcoins were mined. Due to the "quick fix" of the bug, not many people expected to launch a few hours after Evan said he would "definitely not" launch in the next hours.
2014-01-19: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4594074
Right after the launch, there were problems with the window binaries. Evan clearly was mining right from the start, as he offered 5000 Xcoin as a bounty for compiling the binaries.
2014-01-20: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4629218
After the emission of almost 2 million coins, Evan said that "now that everything is stable, I'll be posting later about the vision of this project and milestones!". Up until this point, only the "X11 hashing algoritm" was a known feature. According to him, it was "time to move on to actually implementing what I set out to do".
**2014-01-22//: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4654183
Evan releases his plans for XCoin. At this point, more than 2 million coins were mined.
Xcoin rebranded to Darkcoin and eventually to DASH later on.
Later on, some contradictions surfaced:
The emission schedule changed multiple times. The latest we heard is that the number of coins would be somewhere between 14 million and like 16 million DASH. (https://youtu.be/wIvcQIdSbIY?t=9m)
Evan said that this project was just a hobby he started while working on a full time job and coded Xcoin in a weekend. (https://youtu.be/wIvcQIdSbIY?t=9m17s)
Evan claims there were hundreds of miners if not thousands when Xcoin launched. (https://youtu.be/x5sNx7SMTP8?t=3m39s) Recent investigation showed that there were 124 IP addreses that were mining at the start. 115 of those addresses where Cloudhosting and Dedicated Servers, 9 of them seem to be private/users.106 of them were at Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud instances. (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12781520)
Conclusions:
Evan isn't acting alone, he had/has a team behind him right from the start. It wasn't a hobby. he had a plan to make a profit.
Evan had plans for his coin right from the start, but didn't release them until after the instamine
1.5 million coins were mined in the first 8 hours. Most of these coin ended up in his (and his friends) hands. It's very likely the 500k in the first hour were only mined by him with cloudhosting services.
He lowered the emission later on, to make his relative share of coins bigger.
How can this be all an accident (like Evan is always saying) and NOT be intentional?
Evan was looking for c++ devs for a "for profit startup" at the end of 2013 for the launch of an altcoin. How can you make a profit by launching an altcoin (and be sure to be able to pay your devs)? Answer: by premining and/or instamining. How he did it is pretty easy: * telling people the release would definitely not be in the next couple of hours and after that do launch it a few hours later * buggy windows binaries * a "code error" creating 500k coins in the first hour, >1.5 million in the first 8 hours.
=> DASH was clearly a planned premine/instamine.
Leave Darkcoin ALONE! 
