I have no first-hand knowledge of how the presale was conducted, so I can't praise or condemn that aspect of it. Your comments on that matter carry more weight than mine would if I were to make any, since you seem to be intimately familiar with it.
I'm not a fan of how they handled the Peter Todd relationship, where they put out a
hyped press release claiming he had "joined the project" as their "Chief Scientist," while at the very same time he was
posting on Reddit saying that they were simply a consulting client, being charged the same rate as all of his other consulting clients (including Monero BTW), paying him to do something he already wanted to do (tree chains), and that he wasn't even familiar with what they were doing. That particular episode stunk of sleazy and possibly misleading promotional tactics to me, and in fact I suspect they hired him
specifically in order to do the press release, though of course I can't prove that.
Other than that and what I dug up about the odd (but small) one-week fast-mine I know nothing about VIA, but it did leave me with a bad impression of them.
BTW, the fact that their stuff runs on coindesk is another negative to me, since it seems likely coindesk only covers what they are paid to cover (or perhaps is a huge enough story they would be forced to cover it, but that certainly doesn't including anything VIA-related).
You don't need "intimate first-hand knowledge of how the presale was conducted" to simply research and form a valid opinion of the matter. Just consult the primary sources:
http://blog.viacoin.org/2014/07/07/viacoin-distribution-model.html and the VIA thread. And spare us your overwrought solipsism.
Of course rather than consult primary sources, you'd rather throw out red herrings completely unrelated to VIA's presale.
As if Coindesk had a damn thing to do with VIA, besides reporting on the presale in a very public way that destroyed your now-forgotten claim that 'only insiders knew about the presale.'
Do you have any evidence that VIA bribed Coindesk? No? Then STFU until you do.
As if Peter Todd had a damn thing to do with the presale, besides later becoming the beneficiary of it enabling him to complete his work on treechains.
When you find evidence VIA hired Peter Todd simply for a press release pump, and not treechains, please let us know. Until then, STFU with your baseless defamation.
You're a clever child and I know you can produce constructive criticism of VIA, but all we've seen so far is fact-free FUD. I challenge you to do better.