How important is the fairness of the initial coin distribution for new coins?
Which of the coins now, in your opinion, are distributed fairly?
It is important if you want to make a successful project.
Coins with bad distro don't go very high because smart people (the ones with the money) don't buy it. Litecoin wouldn't be where it is now if it wasn't fairly distributed.
How about NXT? Or Ripple? Or Darkcoin/DASH which was supposedly instamined? These coins still have very high market caps.
From all the coins i have been looking at i see these as failry distributed: Litecoin, Unobtanium, Vertcoin - that's it. Maybe doge, maybe digibyte, maybe megacoin, maybe clams (but these all go with a questionmark) Bitcoin wasn't fairly distributed (stealth, private premine, ninja launch)
Is there any proof that Bitcoin was actually premined? Didn't Satoshi insert the message "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" into the genesis block to prove that he didn't mine a ton of coins before it was released?
It might be accurate to say that Bitcoin was ninjamined because Satoshi and Hal Finney were the only ones who were mining it during its early days, however this was almost certainly unintentional and beyond Satoshi's control. Back then, very few people knew about cryptocurrencies and most of those who did realize the potential of decentralized blockchain-based currencies were the same people who Satoshi directly took inspiration from to create Bitcoin. Also, it was announced on a public mailing list from the very beginning.
Well, the distribution certainly affects market sentiment a lot a long time into the future.
I agree with this.