Philosophical question in light of #assumeUTXO: if you were a brand new bitcoiner, would you care if the history before a snapshot was dishonest?
You know that validating from genesis would reject the snapshot. Someone clearly stole coins in the past and this somehow got grandfathered into the dominant software, but only for assume utxo users.
You already missed your chance to buy early. Even if a malicious fork in the past stole coins, it wouldn't impact your new stash. And you know the total supply.
Couple of assumptions for this scenario:
- you find no alternative chain of headers forking before the snapshot (indicating an ongoing conflict that you don't want to be on the wrong side of when it reorgs)
- you receive your coins in a transaction after the snapshot
So this is not a case of someone giving you targeted malware with a snapshot to trick you into providing services for coins that are never received on the real chain. This is an all out, perhaps even publicly known, conspiracy where everyone just gave up on the real chain.
It's true regarding (1) that you can't rule out the existence of an alternative (valid history) chain that will eventually wipe you out. This is also true for a regular deep reorg, but the risk may be different.
Some new users would never want to use such a corrupted system (but then what, revert to fiat, start an altcoin?).
The incentive for pre-existing users is different. They might not like snapshots exactly because many new users might not care.