I was under the impression it was due to the initial distribution mechanism. It was all open mine, no presale. Basically everything else has had a presale or premine. I could be wrong, because if that were the justification forks should qualify too by virtue of inheriting the chain history.
> The COINBASE address shall be warm at the start of transaction execution, in accordance with the actual cost of reading that account.
> The COINBASE address should also be always be loaded because it receives the block reward and the transaction fees.
Looks like Coinbase currently makes up 10% of Eth staking.
Would this give special privileges to Coinbase over other exchanges?
>In the Ethereum pre-sale they explicitly state it is not intended to be a security or investment offering:
I'm not sure if ETH was completely in the clear even with this approach. Vitalik and other founders seemed to have created expectations of profit in their ICO presentations to US investors in a few 2014 videos.
