SuperCoin Bounces Back After Busoni’s Kryptonite Move

Look, up in the sky…it’s a bird…it’s a plane…

Okay, let’s not get out of hand here. SuperCoin hasn’t done much to save the world and it’s clearly not bulletproof. Still, the price has firmed up nicely in the past few days after being backstabbed and submarined by ‘Busoni,’ the Boy King of Poloniex.

I don’t actually know how old ‘Busoni’ is, but after his actions regarding SuperCoin it’s not hard to imagine he’s still wet behind the ears.

For those who don’t know what went down, I’ll summarize. SuperCoin won the voting to be included on Poloniex (what an honor!) Instead of playing his role and facilitating trade for SUPER Busoni instead decided to reject their inclusion and make this antagonistic public post:

“MAX_MONEY is pretty much what it sounds like. This means that the actual maximum supply of SuperCoin is 150 million, not 50 million. Furthermore, the maximum PoW coins is 50 million, rather than the claimed 18.2 million. The 150 million number appears twice in the code, so it can hardly be considered an accident.

We did not find evidence of an existing hidden premine, but extra coins could potentially be minted all at once at the end of the PoW phase, sent to exchanges via the “anon” feature, and dumped.

We have other concerns about the coin, particularly concerning the proposed method of anonymity, but the shenanigans with the maximum supply is sufficient for us to reject this coin.”

For the first time in Altcoin History (and in the history of Poloniex) he decided to check the code and reject an inclusion AFTER his customers voted for the coin. Actually, he admitted later he didn’t check the code, but you get the idea.

Busoni ‘Busts’ SuperCoin But Doesn’t Provide Proof

The big problem with the post was he didn’t actually catch SuperCoin doing anything wrong that should have precluded them from being listed on his exchange. In general, altcoin exchanges should be HAPPY to list altcoins. After all, trading fees are how they earn their money. Wouldn’t it make more sense to do all you can to work to work with a coin Dev to make sure that trading can be handled in a smooth manner. We’ve seen plenty of examples in recent days that show this is not the case. Altcoin exchanges are happy to accept the fees, but will not expend even ONE IOTA of energy to communicate with coin teams or to protect investors from scams.

Oh, you’re probably thinking…”but that’s exactly what Busoni was doing here“. As part of his self-proclaimed effort to ‘raise the bar‘ for shitcoins he’s now reviewing the code to make sure he doesn’t get taken advantage of. Sounds great, in theory. If there actually was a transparent process of review that included appeals and arbitration maybe that would be the case. However, with a dictatorship that’s not possible. In the current era, what ‘Busoni’ the unknown man says goes. His word is law and if you don’t like it you can always trade at one of the other 42 altcoin exchanges in existence.

In reality, that’s probably what people should consider doing after this latest debacle.

Standards Will Go Up Soon Enough, Anyway

Whether the current crowd of altcoin exchanges can push the bar higher (right now it’s below sea level) is doubtful. However, in the next few years if trading volume continues to climb it will happen anyway. A natural process of thinning the herd will occur, but even more important, a new breed of venture-capital backed exchanges will rise to take over from the current crop.

This is a traditional and normal part of any new industry. At first hobbyists supply most of the services. As the money increases, venture capitalists who are hungering for new opportunities, put big money into companies that are designed to take over. These services are generally very transparent, reliable, and much less prone to misdeeds. They’re also fully compliant with laws, which is going to be a bigger deal as regulatory agencies clamor to get their piece of the growing cryptocurrency pie.

We can forgive Busoni for his error with the code. After all, he’s just learning. He was a newbie to BitCoinTalk on August 14, 2013, when he wrote:

“Here is genuine noob question, but I haven’t been able to find the answer on my own.

In Sunny’s paper, it says that the origin prime for a given block must be divisible by the previous block’s hash.

But block hashes have letters in them. How do you get a number you can actually divide?”

He’s had quite a rise from ‘noob‘ as he called himself to Owner in less than a year. We can expect many more mistakes from him as part of his ongoing learning process (since he’s learning on the job). The key is to make sure WE don’t lose money because of them. As always, be SUPER careful of trading in new altcoins, especially if you’re basing the ‘price rise’ on the actions of a third party. As evidenced here, ANYTHING can happen with an altcoin and most of it is bad news for people who are holding!

We’ll keep our eyes peeled for more developments. The team behind SUPER has moved on and the price of the coin has rallied a bit. The damage has been done, but it won’t stop a dedicated team or community from pressing forward.

Thanks for stopping by and reading. If you have any comments, add them below.