I looked at mining it, but it's clearly not profitable to mine it because it's been mostly premined
I will politely disagree: Darkcoin was pre-announced and fair-launched, and everybody had a chance to mine on day 1. A sizeable chunk of DRK was mined on day 1, but that's not at all the same as a premine, and to claim otherwise is BS sophistry. There is a meaningful distinction between premining and a pre-announced fair launch.
In any case, I'm sure the devs got a fair chunk of the day 1 coins, which I see as a GOOD thing because it means they are financially invested in making the coin succeed.
That aside -- if the day 1 mining rate is the only complaint you have against Darkcoin, then that's not too shabby. No coin is 100% perfect.
Regarding profitability, if you do the math taking into account the differences in X11 hashrate and the ~40% lower power draw, you'll find it's about on par with scrypt profitability, if not better.
When the coin is designed to yield a huge instamine that is exactly like a premine.
If darkcoin had had constant block size as they are now there would only been 776,525 coins. But the total coins is actually 3,829,439. That mean that of all the existing darkcoins 79,9% is instamined. And after what i have read they are going to reduce max coins to 22 million. That mean that darkcoin in reality got an instamine of 13,8%.
The fact that it is designed that way and that "everyone" could have mined it don't matter. It is designed as a scam, and a get rich quick scheme. Very good branding, but technically flawed. There is no doubt that this is a scam.
