Has the silver coin idea been permanently put to bed by now or is it waiting for some asset exchange action?
It is neither. As you know NEM is always prudent with the things it does. We are not ready yet as we need to make sure that we have the right governance in managing this.
So, we are still looking at how to do this, especially you know how hard it is to manage physical assets in a decentralised cyber set up like ours.
Personally I'd wait until NEM has an AE so those silver coins can be issued as mosaics and redeemed or sold. This would of course mean that it wouldn't happen for another while but it seems like the most logical way to do it at least to me.
Technically they could be issued right now since mosaics are already in place but without an AE it seems rather point less. Of course it would be totally fine for people that want to redeem i.e. get that physical silver coin.
I realize that this does not solve the governance issue.
Another thing to consider is that there is probably a good chunk of original stake holders that no longer have access to their original account. I wonder if it's even worth to issue mosaics to those accounts. I guess it wouldn't really matter but I still somehow feel like that would be a shame. No biggie - just something to consider imho.
I agree, and some innovation for NEM network going to premium features, such as snapshot for an ICO using its platform. So that it incentivize the NEM hodls.