I have no idea. I do remember that minergate (with an obscene fee) was available either right away or very quickly, so it is probably related to the developers in some manner.
It popped up pretty much a day after the BCN forumn was announced and they had the miner program there with it aswell.
and if you start looking at whois records you can connect minergate to
www.appliedprobability.orgwhere as bytecoin.org has their whois protected, like bitoin and ducknote
always interesting to see who is out in the open and who likes their privacy.
by the way who is really behind ducknote, what is their connection bcn? is that bcns way of appeasing all those who
were upset at not being in on the early bcn days.
Anybody know?