Tokens are often issued to the public through a crowd sale called an initial coin offering (ICO). The creators of the token will issue the token to others in exchange for ether and sometimes bitcoin and other digital currencies. There have been many ICOs recently and in a short time they have completely changed the way projects are funded. There is no requirement that tokens must be well distributed, although if you are building a decentralized application ideally you want the tokens to be owned by as many people as possible.