Pre-issued and sold: when founders sell coins they premined
The industry has many words for one thing. An ICO, a SAFT, a private round, a strategic sale, a company "distributing" its holdings on exchanges — each sounds different, and some are presented as no sale at all. Underneath, every one of them is the same act: people who created a supply for themselves, instead of mining it, selling part of it to others.
Is a company selling its premined coins on exchanges a presale?
By substance, yes. Whether a founder sells before launch in an ICO, to investors in a private round, or years later on exchanges, it is selling coins it created for itself rather than mined. The timing and the channel differ; the act does not. CoinSpectrum labels all of them the same way: pre-issued, and sold.
One act, many names
A coin can come into existence in two ways: mined or validated by whoever does the work, or allocated by its creators. Only the second can be sold by its creators, because only then do they hold coins they did not have to earn. The sale can happen before the chain launches, as in Ethereum's 2014 crowdsale; to investors at a discount, as in most venture rounds; or after launch, as when a company that holds most of the supply sells it on exchanges. In each case the buyer pays the creator for coins the creator gave itself.
The difference people usually draw — that a pre-launch sale is fundraising and later selling is just "distribution" — describes when the money arrived, not where the coins came from.
The largest cryptocurrencies that were pre-issued and sold
| Coin | How it was sold |
|---|---|
| Ethereum | A 42-day public sale in 2014 raised about 31,500 BTC (about $18 million) for roughly 60 million ether; further pools went to early contributors and the Foundation. |
| XRP | All 100 billion created at genesis. Ripple sold company-held XRP to institutions and on exchanges; the US court in SEC v. Ripple (2023) counted about $729 million in institutional sales and about $757 million in programmatic exchange sales. |
| BNB | A 2017 ICO and an earlier angel round, from a supply created in full at launch. |
| Solana | Seed, founding, validator and strategic sales, then a public auction of 8 million SOL in March 2020 at $0.22. |
| Cardano | An ada voucher sale from 2015 to 2017, mostly to buyers in Japan, raising about 108,845 BTC. |
| TRON | A private sale to early investors (about 26% of supply) and a 2017 public sale (about 40%). |
| Polkadot | A public sale of half the supply in 2017, then private sales in 2019 and 2020. |
| Avalanche | A private token sale and a public sale of 72 million AVAX in July 2020, about $60 million in all with earlier venture funding. |
| Stellar | All lumens created at genesis; Stripe provided $3 million of seed funding in 2014 and received 2% of them. |
| Hedera | SAFT rounds and a 2018 sale to accredited investors, reported at about $124 million. |
| Internet Computer | A 2017 seed round and 2018 strategic and presale rounds with venture investors. |
| Flare | All FLR allocated at genesis; an $11.3 million round in 2021 was paid in FLR. |
| Osmosis | In 2021 the Osmosis Foundation sold $21 million of treasury OSMO in a round led by Paradigm. |
From CoinSpectrum's launch research, October 2026; each coin's page carries the figures and their sources. Ethereum Classic carries the same 2014 sale, because it shares Ethereum's history up to the 2016 split.
What does not count as a sale
Raising money for a company is not selling the coin. Kaspa's developers raised venture money for their research firm, but the coin launched with no premine and no sale, so nothing was sold. Zcash had no coin sale either, but its company's investors were paid part of the founders' reward — coins in return for money — so that share counts. A chain split is not a sale: Bitcoin Cash holders kept the coins they already had. And a sale of a separate asset is not a sale of the coin: Nebulous sold Siafunds in 2014, not siacoins.
Why it matters
A coin whose creators sold it has holders who paid the creators, and creators who were paid for coins they did not earn. Early buyers in private rounds usually paid a fraction of the public price, with tokens unlocking on a schedule, and the selling continues as they unlock. None of that makes a coin worthless, but it is a different thing from a coin every unit of which was mined by whoever did the work — which is why the CoinSpectrum Grade scores premine and fundraising separately, and lowers the fundraising score by the share of supply sold.
Questions
Did XRP have an ICO?
Not a classic ICO, but all XRP was created at genesis and Ripple has sold its holdings to institutions and on exchanges. Selling pre-issued supply is a sale whatever the channel, so XRP is labelled pre-issued and sold.
Did Ethereum have a premine?
Yes. About 72 million ether existed at launch: about 60 million sold in the 2014 public sale and about 12 million allocated to early contributors and the Ethereum Foundation.
What is the difference between a premine and a presale?
A premine is supply created for insiders without mining it. A presale is the sale of some of that supply. Every presale is also a premine, because a creator can only sell coins it already holds.
Is a private round a presale?
Yes. Investors in a private, seed or strategic round buy coins the creators allocated to themselves, usually at a discount, which is the same act as a public sale.
Which major cryptocurrencies were never sold?
Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Monero, Dogecoin and Kaspa had no premine and no sale; every coin was mined. The site's fair-launch list ranks every such coin.