Small? The average joe is broke compared to these guys. You don't have to premine to buy half of your stash outwright when it's so new that someone selling their coins for .25 cents a piece thinks it's a rippin profit. Not only that, but being the first to actually mine when it hits shelves... The audacity.. It's a literal slap in the face.
Price of Monero after 1 month was $3. And when i mined with my CPU i mined like 1 Monero a week. So trust me noone got their coins for free.
Yes the one that bought Monero about a year ago made nice profit. I think cheapest was in beginning of 2015 since BTC was low so Monero was at $0.25 back then. Those that believed in Monero at those most darkest times profited. They sold their houses eat only bread and water since they send all their salaries they got from 3 jobs where they worked so hard to Poloniex to buy Monero. But with soem bad luck all might be fro nothing.
Developers also wrote code in their spare time. So they could nto focus on their job 100% and never got any raise there to buy cheap Moneros in 2015 sadly. We the rest was lucky enough to make this happen.
Lets not forget that there is a DEV fund and most pools contribute. BTW where is a link to the accounting of that fund?
Not quite accounting, but they do have milestones listed.
https://forum.getmonero.org/9/work-in-progressOdd, not all of them seem to have the same detailed format with milestones and payout listed under the bars. https://forum.getmonero.org/9/work-in-progress/2400/open-source-amd-miner-by-wolf0
I am not really sure about this but at soem point i read or heard someone said that that found was untouched.