Burbucoin: From 1 to 30 Satoshis in Nine Days, Then Back to 4

Burbucoin: From Satoshi 1 to 30 in Nine Days and Back to 4

A cap of 8.4 billion coins, a block every two and a half minutes, and a textbook promise: to be used for paying everyday transactions. This is how Burbucoin arrived in January 2014. A Scrypt algorithm cryptocurrency that took nine days to multiply its price by thirty, eventually giving back almost all of it. No pre-mine. Just open-source code uploaded to the thread.

The Numbers of a Textbook Altcoin

The specifications were unoriginal: Scrypt algorithm, 5,000 coins reward per block, 2.5-minute block time, 50 confirmations for maturity, and its own P2P and RPC ports. What stood out was the total supply. The cap was 8.4 billion units, with the reward halving every four years and difficulty recalculating block by block using the KGW system. Mining with the CPU yielded much less than with a graphics card.

From Satoshi 1 to 30 in Nine Days

The price started at practically one satoshi and barely moved until day 9, when 19.5 million BUR changed hands, and the value jumped from 1 to 30 satoshis. An unprecedented volume until then. Later, there were talks of drops to 4 satoshis, and someone recorded a purchase of 1,307,500 BUR for 0.13075000 BTC at ten satoshis. The price then bounced to 10 and then to 11, with buy orders piling up to 50 satoshis.

Who Mined Burbucoin and With What Machines?

With the coin newly born, the difference between mining with the CPU or the graphics card was abysmal: an i7 yielded around 5 kH/s, while a GPU reached 300 kH/s, sixty times more. One miner reported 6 computers with 5 graphics cards each, thirty in total, although he only used one for Burbucoin, and dedicated more than half of what he mined to donating to forum colleagues. Some new miners were sent 1,000 BUR.

The Mandatory Update and the KGW Glitch

Development wasn't smooth either. An update was mandatory due to a timewarping vulnerability in KGW, with a new version that could force a re-download of the blockchain. Later, a security patch with additional checkpoints to secure the chain. Some participants complained that the creator wasn't engaging in the thread.

New Exchange and a Betting Site

The commercial leap came with ups and downs. The entry into a newly created exchange with three markets was announced, and the project's own account recommended abandoning the previous platform. In November 2014, the first online betting site accepting Burbucoin appeared in beta phase, antiestéticaturing its own roulette. The enthusiasm didn't last long: a user sent 1,000 BUR and proge up with a balance of -4 without having played a single round.

Was Burbucoin Worth Anything or Just Smoke?

Here, opinions were polarized. One faction argued that launching a coin without prior notice and without a shared mining mechanism made it a quasi-scam-coin, even though no one had pre-mined anything. The defense was simple: the code was published, the chain worked, and paying with BUR would always be possible. Exchanging it for another currency, however, was left for later.

A few are still waiting for the yacht and champagne; others offered to trade ten Burbucoins for five Petros.