Most of which was sold to the general public. The sale was open for six weeks, widely known in the crypto community, and even reported in mainstream press after its first couple days made it one of the largest crowdsales to date.

It sounds very similar to how Russian privatization was done. Perhaps vitalik took inspiration from the oligarchs back home

It sounds more like western IPOs. Russian privatization distributed free ownership vouchers to the Russian population, who mostly weren't interested and sold them to the enterprise managers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia#Vouche...

~weren't interested~ Were busy trying not to starve to death and sold anything they had for whatever price somebody would offer. Ftfy

Valid point...and even less like Ethereum's presale.

Interesting, I didn't know this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16183700 (2018)