Pre-mining

Pre-mining is where the creators and/or founders of a coin will mine large amounts of the coin before releasing it to the public, therefore once it launches and investors start buying the coin and public mining begins, they already have a significant market share of the coin, which helps in controlling the value. This process has been known to lead to Scamcoins, in which the investors sell off these premined coins as soon as people start investing in a currency with no value.