If it is not a scam for the devs to be pulling a xcoin/dark kind of captive instamine then explain clearly why it is not a scam to be doing so.
Disclosure: i mined both before and after the relaunch. I have a small chunk converted to VESTS now.
The only reason I consider this less of a scam is that the developer was up front about it being information-restricted and manipulated by him for his benefit from the very beginning. There was no "fair launch" in the sense of making everything available to everyone easily at the very same time, but there was also no
pretense of a fair launch.
if you go back to the original pre-relaunch thread, the post was very clear about it being explicitly "unfair":
Complaints
There are many common complaints/conspiracies about STEEM that we want to address up front:
1. We know that our announcement could be vague and create a barrier to entry for those who cannot code
2. We have mined the vast majority of blocks thus far and we do not attempt to hide it
3. We have mined using forum names so that we can give those names to their rightful owners
4. We have mined to register accounts with popular boy and girl names because they might have extra value some day
5. We know that many here may chose to avoid or not mine STEEM simply because of how it was launched, that is your choice.
If you do not like how STEEM was launched please move on.
I tend to agree with Eclipse Crypto that he probably did get screwed, and the reason he got screwed is he treated it as something vaguely like a fair launch where he could go and mine a lot of coins and get away with it. By contrast, although I also have access to essentially-infinite mining power, I recognized that this coin was set up as unfair from the start, and if one wants to participate at all, one is better off doing so as a minority partner and not directly challenging the developer.
1) Never outshine the master