According to FORTUNE Magazine, gold was ninja mined. At first, the purpose of my post was to make up some analogy about how gold's initial introduction to the world economy was "unfair" just like every popular cryptocurrency is claimed to be.
This claim of unfair introduction is why we have ICO and other launch schemes. And I thought it'd be a great way to thumb my nose at these people and their sour grapes.
But after researching it a bit, I found out that even before 1992, when this Mongolia mining business got started, people were doing what is referred to as "ninja mining."
Today, if you claim a cryptocurrency has been ninja mined, you're claiming something surreptitious happened with the introduction. Like, it was mined by a few people in secret. Or it was mined in public, but nobody knew all of the details prima facie, and if they had, more people would have gotten involved.
But it turns out, ninja mining actually predates cryptocurrency.