Re:What is a Bitcoin fork?
by mrb on Friday November 10, 2017 @11:46AM
(#15671079)
It is much too early to judge Bitcoin Gold. The launch has not even taken place yet. They forked a few weeks ago, the developers are currently mining privately, and the public launch will take place in a few days. People criticize the pre-mine, but it's only 0.6% of the total supply of coins. Perfectly reasonable IMHO.
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Most people don't think that pre-mines are reasonable at all. That's a good way to know which coins are scams. Why do they deserve 0.6% of a total market that could be worth billions of dollars, exactly? Because they changed a hash algorithm and released a marketing website?
That used to be the prevailing opinion. Pre-mined coins were generally regarded as scams or pump-and-dumps. But after Ethereum which is almost all pre-mined sharply rose in value, there seems to have been a change in public perception. This is what opened the gates for the new generation of altcoins, also known as ICOs. They don't pretend that they're anything else than pre-mined. In fact, the huge sums that the pre-mined coins are sold for is used for marketing as a measure of interest in their coin. It's a strange new world.
Why did Airbnb founders deserve X% of the shares of their company that could be worth billions of dollars? Because they made a stupid simple website to rent out your apartment? Same question, same answer. We live in a capitalistic world, I think it is reasonable that people try to launch for-profit ventures. Ethereum did something equivalent to a pre-mine + instant sale: they created the initial ETH supply out of thin air, and immediately sold it for BTC to investors.