It is what it is: Option 1
Sooner or later a lot of that coins will appear in the market, affecting the market numbers (price, volumes...). Any other option is absurd.
I don't think we have to "obey" CMC ... Who are they ? To me they are acting this way due some hidden interests, unknown for the rest us. What we have to do is to listen the BitCore community.
At the end, if CMC doesn't want to be rational, we can choose to obey or to adapt ourselves to the new situation considering more options, including a Bitcore fork to undo transactions for unclaimed BTC coins returning them to circulation again (via more airdrops, or any other method) to satisfy these new CMC rules "made expressly for us".
I'm not in crypto to obey arbitrary decissions from third parties, so it should be a BitCore community and developers decission.
We can decide what we want, but not what CMC puts on their page. But if you wanna go toe to toe with the no.1 place to go for information about crypto currencies, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't like it too, but trying to compete with CMC about credibility is IMHO a battle you're going to loose. We need to find a compromise in a diplomatic way, at least for starters. What doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer option 1. 1 would be tje ideal solution.
It's not about going toe to toe, this is about correct and real information. Bitcore deserves to be listed there correctly and we must try it the hardest we can. But in the last case, I even prefer that CMC remove Bitcore from their listings than to be there with numbers that cheat new Bitcore members, coming here always asking about this issue because they don't understand the wrong CMC numbers.
With the calculation method that CMC is currently using with Bitcore, it's impossible for any coin to be listed in high positions (not even for Bitcoin !).
Something is shady at CMC regarding this. This year there were coins that appeared in their TOP 20 from nowhere with most part of the coins not distributed, and big big chunks in the hands of the creators... And now they are arguing against Bitcore real numbers ? mmmm....
The Bitcore numbers in CMC were listed correctly for some hours and then they changed them. Why ? Who was the person/group that told them to change Bitcore numbers ? Something shady happened there...