Except you're forgetting this:

Btw, what's up with the price at Bittrex? isn't 98k sat a little high for a coin with 400,000,000 premine, that is yet to be distributed (how do I get a piece of that pie, anyway?)?

This isn't an accidental "instamine"; it's a big supply of tokens that weren't available to be mined. If you read the SEC's statement, this appears to be where they have problems. Keep reading the BitcoinTalk thread and people correctly have problems as well. Bitcoin was available for ANYONE to mine; this is not the case with LBRY.

A "mined" token is not a sold investment. But a supply of tokens that isn't available to be mined and is held by "people" (ie: what may be considered investors) could be viewed differently.