EDIT: in the event that everybody on the waiting list gets a stake I agree with the above poster: auction off the remaining stakes for charity.
Great Idea.
What's the obsession with charity? We are not a charity fund. If someone want to spend his money for charity - then go for it, but don't use money that belong to others for it. We need a strong coin and we should spend all available money for development and marketing. I'd better give all money to dev team so they could quit their day jobs and focus on Nem. After all $40-50K spent on development and marketing may increase coin capitalization 10 times and everybody can spend 10 times more money on charity if they're so obsessed with it.
It is no obsession. If the people on the waiting list will pay for their stake I think there is sufficient funds for development, for marketing and for the devs to pay the rent and go on a well deserved binge.
My reasoning is the following: the best IPO ever was the Counterparty IPO. Over 2000 BTC where taken out of the market and thus payed to all holders of BTC as a dividend. All people who burned BTC made a profit, and by doing so everyone in the community made a profit.
If NEM is released it will be on an exchange and the minimum price for 1 NEM will be 1 satoshi. This equals >0.1 BTC per stake, per definition. Profit for all.
An auction for more development funds and marketing funds smells like greed. Greed for a larger profit than the profit we already made. IMO, this would go against everything that made NEM a valuable idea in the first place.
Since the NEM team has made us a profit already, and since I'm a communist at heart, I believe those that didn't have the chance to participate should share in my profit, since I didn't do anything to deserve it for myself alone.
A good charity for the hypothetical auction would be this:
https://www.counterparty.co/full-bitcoin-nodeshttp://nodeshares.comWe'd pay a tribute to the crypto community by financially supporting the above initiative. Bitcoin paved the way for the NEM team to be able to create NEM, and it will continue to pave that road for the foreseeable future. Call it charity. I'd call it common sense.