Since joining Steemit I've been reading up a bit on the Steem cryptocurrency, and came across an interesting discussion in an announcement thread. In the announcement post, the following is stated:
"We have secured ~80% of the initial STEEM via mining. Our plan is to keep 20%, sell 20% to raise money, and give away 40% to attract users / referrers."
Am I right in thinking that this means that 80% of the Steem currency was mined in advance by the developers? And if so, what are the potential effects on the Steem economy, aside from making the devs very very rich if Steem gets as big as Bitcoin?
I can understand why premining is a temptation to cryptocurrency developers. After all, if you're going to build a currency you might as well make sure you profit from it, but 80%? that seems a bit... excessive.
Anyone more versed on cryptocurrencies and premining want to chime in on this? Is this a problem? business as usual? maybe even a good thing in some way I'm not seeing?
#steem #steemit #cryptocurrency #premine #economics #question