If i can't acquire native tokens except by willingly submitting to a centrally issued extortion scheme, then it's a permissioned ledger.
Say hello to Bitcoin mining pools...
I agree with Fuserleer that Bitcoin is gradually losing its decentralized attribute because of the economics of mining, as the economies-of-scale increase and the block reward decreases.
Monero is ostensibly more decentralized because it is early stage and hasn't yet scaled to great economies-of-scale in mining, e.g. there is no ASIC available yet afaik.
However I don't know how eMunie plans to obtain a more wide and competitive distribution than proof-of-work. And is that topic really appropriate in a thread about me.
I've stated why I no longer like ICOs. I'll leave it at that.
That's the funny part about it. When people complain that others are able to acquire coins at a better marginal cost, they're essentially saying they don't like free market systems. Ironically, the first sign you have a free market is that cartels and monopolies form. Economy of scale is just something you have to deal with and the only other option is to remove the private sector monopoly power and hand it to the government instead. Private sector cartels/monopolies tend to have a finite lifespan, while government based monopolies tend to be immortal, less accountable, and less efficient until the entire system collapses. So everything in both governance and finance comes down to picking the lesser evil of those two.