Nice omissions smooth. If you have to remove context to make your point, it's a clue that your point is not very strong.
The presale was done in an entirely honorable and optimal manner. It provided funds to hire Brynn San and Peter Todd, etc.
The presale was done in an entirely honorable and optimal manner. It provided funds to hire Brynn San and Peter Todd, etc.
There was no omission. I was making a specific point, without comment on your opinion whether the presale was handled well or not
Fact: 1/9 (correction noted and see below) of the eventual total coin supply (presumably a much higher portion of the current supply, but I haven't figured this out) was sold to a group of relative insiders (i.e. people who even knew the coin existed) within a relatively short period of time.
What the was used for and whether it was conducted well doesn't change that point at all. As I said, if you think presales are a good idea, you will likely favor this, particularly if it was handled well (which according to you it was).
I leave it up to individuals who care to decide whether that makes or a desirable outcome or not.
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It prevented insta/ninja/nerd mining.
This is nonsense. There are plenty of ways of preventing instaming, etc. that have nothing to do with a presale, and if anything the extra coins rewarded in the first week encourage instamining-type behavior (people who are able to deploy a lot of the right kind of hardware quickly and get everything in place right away get a disproportionate advantage).
I believe coins should do the exact opposite: a slow-start method (first suggested to me by gmaxwell) where the earlier blocks have lower rewards. That provides a good opportunity to address any startup issues (download problems, build problems, etc.) and avoids giving any particular advantage to people who are good with getting stuff up and running quickly (note, this last group happens to include me, and I've made a fair amount mining new coin launches, so I'm arguing against my own interest here). I'll note in fairness that Monero didn't do this, though also fair to note that the current team was not at all involved with the actual launch.
If by "nerd" mining you mean dga-type stuff, it is true they use the relatively mature Scrypt algorithm, and that is what prevents dga-style "nerd" mining, not the presale. It also likely gives a major advantage to people with the best Scrypt ASICs, which if history is any indication (and I believe it is) will usually be people with close relationships to the developers of those ASICs or the developers themselves.
Whether or not anyone cares about that I leave up to them (obviously opinions about ASIC-mining vs. non-ASIC-mining differ widely). It certainly doesn't count as a strike against VIA compared to other Scrypt coins, I'll say that.
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PS You also got the total coins wrong, it's 92 million not "30." 
Important correction! I misread the block reward schedule. I will edit above to avoid misleading anyone.
EDIT: In further correction on VIA. They did have a slow-start period of 10K blocks (about 4 days) with no mining reward. I applaud that, though I probably would just include some tiny reward as opposed to zero (small difference).
But overall the reward for the first 40K (not including the first 10K) blocks was about 100K coins in excess of the normal reward. I still find that bizarre and close to being an instamine over the first week. I see no valid purpose for it other than giving insiders a chance to rent rigs and mine out some extra coins quickly when few people even knew the coin existed.
