From Circle-of-Gold to Mega$Nets to Bitcoin

> The novelty with bitcoin is that all the spots in the list are created at inception.* New players can only join by purchasing a pre-existing position in the chain.*

Wrong; at genesis, there were no Bitcoins (unlike premined coins such as Ethereum). All bitcoins in existence come from mining which is a fair competition at any point in time (though admittedly less so across time as the block subsidy halves every 4 years).