if anyone got coins for who they were, it was premined.

Premine with a lockup period.

People who say it isn’t are claiming so bc they want to escape the brand implications. They are either disingenuous or dumb. It’s the same as a premine.

another option is that they're smarter and see nuance that you can't.

Another option is you're retarded.

Speaking of retarded, let me make it simple for you. premine. pre, mined. --- pre-, from the Latin proposition and adverb prae; meaning: before, in front of; covering both time (earlier than) and space (in front of, ahead of). was some ZEC allocated before (prae) the mining? no. ergo, a premine it cannot be. is that simple enough for you or should I try the eli5 version instead?

Where did the ecash tokens come from? They were mined by satoshi. Reallocating tokens he mined is pre mining. You're just retarded. Don't get into a semantics bullshit game. The only difference is they wait because they say so, not because they have to work to get them. Mining is just a word we have used to abstract distribution of supply. These coins were not "mined" with proof of work. They are new coins being distributed. That's "mining". It's happening before the chain goes to mainnet. Before means "pre" Stfu

"don't get into a semantics bullshit game", says the angry soyboy with an atitude problem before he entirely redefines what mining means. everyone else is telling you something. your arrogance prevents you from listening. probably compensating for something there, eh? call it a dev tax, which is what it is. if you call it a premine then congratulations, you've just erased the difference between mining in private before launch and allocating a portion of block rewards for development (neither of which I'm a fan of, but that's besides the point). maybe that's good enough for you. for others who are more precise about language, semantics and etymology, it isn't.

How does Ethereum get mined now? Does it require energy expendature?

You are telling me something. Everyone is telling you something. Who is the arrogant one?