[Gosper]

You should absolutely examine every coin and token's premine, distribution, issuance policies, caps, and the control and malleability of those over time.

But you're barking up the wrong tree here. Bitcoin is one of incredibly few cryptoassets with no premine. I hesitate to say only because I don't keep track of the myriad uninteresting derivatives. You could have been Hal Finney or someone else as equally receptive and enthusiastic on the open mailing list right from the outset.

[mcculley]

We don't know that there is no premine. There were very many blocks early on that are thought to have been mined by Satoshi. He/they could have discarded the key or could emerge sometime in the future and cash out.

[Gosper]

You can directly inspect the Bitcoin blockchain. The genesis block pointedly includes the headline it does to demonstrate it could not have been created before 3 Jan 2009.

After that date the blocks Satoshi produced, as a requirement to process and validate transactions to bootstrap the network were simply mined not pre-mined, in a manner open to all.

They could indeed transact in the future. Although I suspect at this juncture should that ever occur it would be to make a political statement since I find people of that intellectual bent tend to be poorly motivated by base material wants. Anyhow, that's pointless gossipy speculation.

[mcculley]

Ah. Yes, I had in my mind a sloppy, incorrect meaning of “premine”.

My point remains the same for questioning the intent of the founders. We have no idea what Satoshi might do with the power he has in the form of early blocks.