When we started this journey with TRBO coming up to a year ago, the supply was already getting large - around 40bn as of July last year and at 500% ROI we quickly forecast a supply of trillions by end of 2019. You don’t need to be an economist to realise that hyper-inflation would soon put the TRBO supply into an untenable position.
One of the first things we did as a team was to connect with a seasoned blockchain developer, whose services have been funded primarily by the team along with some community donations. We knew we needed both a wallet and code upgrade (after all TRBO code is based on Bitcoin retro edition, circa 2015 code) but also an ROI reduction in order to bring the hyperinflation under control and create a coin supply and distribution that would be sustainable into the future. We aren’t here to flip a quick buck but to create something great out of a coin that had long since been abandoned.
A key priority was to upgrade via consensus and fork, that is to maintain the old chain rather than conduct a swap as so many coins do (sometimes repeatedly). Both for nostalgic reasons (because hey, TRBO is an OLD coin nowadays that has barely had any issues) but also because exchanges such as Cryptopia can charge a LOT for swaps. And as a community takeover team with no premine or ICO or funds beyond kind community donations, we had to at least attempt a non-swap approach.
Well here's the first admission of failure. Despite 10 months and double digit wallet versions attempting to update the chain via consensus update and dozens of hours of testing, the wallets will still not function as they should. Specifically, the issue is getting the updated (newer) code to stake. We cracked the blockchain sync and coin transfers some time ago but without any staking we were stuck.
And now here we are. A year later, 10x the supply ... currently hovering around 400bn. Bear market not withstanding, we saw a roughly equivalent drop in coin value ... from around 10 Liteoshi to 1-2 Liteoshi. The market cap stayed fairly stable through this whole period (until recently). Many people don't understand that if supply increases then naturally the per-coin value decreases – and for a high ROI coin it’s your staking that compensates hopefully to your benefit eventually.
Early this year of course, Cryptopia got hacked and the TRBO market there, which we tried so hard to protect, is dormant with no indications of when it may return. Sure, we could wait for Cryptopia, in another few months the supply will have increased by another few hundred billion or more and ... oh wait, there won't be any demand for a low priced Doge-market only coin. And even if there were initially, would there be at the end of 2019 when supply hits 1 trillion? How about the end of 2020 when supply is at 30 trillion? Or some time in 2022 when TRBO supply will hit a cool Quadrillion? That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000 in case you wondered. I don’t even know what comes after that but TRBO, if left at 500% ROI, would get there within 5 years. Crazy, right?
So we've made the tough call to conduct a swap. A swap to introduce up-to-date 2019 core code. A swap to introduce Masternodes (more on that to come). But also a swap to reduce the supply, which at 400bn is already too high to give TRBO a meaningful future.
We thought long and hard about the ratio and the ideal supply for TRBO moving forward. After analysing a lot of other successful coins and thinking about TRBO’s use case coming in the near future, we have decided that the ratio will be 271:1. Which means that for every 271 TRBO coins you hold at the time of the swap, you will get 1 new TRBO coin. 1,000,000 TRBO will become 3,690 TRBO, etc. Total supply will go from around 4-500bn (the latter likely before the swap is completed) to 1-2bn, which is a fairly common supply level nowadays and manageable if we are careful with future inflation (still being worked out but will be high enough to encourage staking but not so high as to cause hyper-inflation as currently).
Will the price magically go up by 271x? Well of course we hope so, if not more - particularly when the whitepaper, website and use case are revealed very soon. But it's hard to judge a real price for TRBO right now anyway. Take the Doge market at Altilly, the only real active market currently. If you sold right now into the Buy book, you'd be able to sell 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) TRBO for about ... $40. Remember that the value of the coins you hold isn't necessarily "Latest price x holding" but rather the price you could actually sell them at, the liquidity.
Is the swap optional? Yes, in theory. The nature of blockchain means that if there are wallets staking, the old chain will chug along forever more and potentially reach that magic Quadrillion supply level. All active pools and exchanges will be automatically swapping to the new TRBO coin, so if you don't want to you will have to withdraw.
The big unknown is Cryptopia, that lifeline and great white hope so many of us have doted on for many months now. That same great white hope who unfortunately have not responded to any of our emails (granted TRBO is not alone in that regard, by rough estimate there are 200+ coins still inactive and Cryptopia has not provided a public update for weeks). So we must move on, and when/if Cryptopia are ready to discuss TRBO, we will make all attempts possible to implement the swap there too (timeline pending as we can’t wait forever). At minimum we hope that Cryptopia will allow the community to withdraw their coins so that a swap can be conducted (again timeline pending we will honour the swap for coins currently on Cryptopia).
We are still working on exact dates but hope to complete this swap within the coming month. The swap window will be relatively short, just one week. Why? Because with such a high ROI a long swap window would discourage anyone from swapping until the very last second. Even with a week the reality is many will try to wring those last high ROI stakes out before swapping, but we will try out best to accommodate. Pools and Exchanges will disable wallets at the beginning of the swap week, complete the swap “offline” and reopen at the end. Those with their own wallets will receive clear instructions – a swap site and bot are being built already.
So what next for TRBO after this swap? Why bother? Well, apart from the fact that the TRBO team are all emotionally attached to this community, we want to integrate TRBO as a key component of a new in-development, fully fledged crypto-based platform. And we can't do that with TRBO in its current state due to its old code base and (too) high supply. So post swap here's what is coming up:
If you hadn't already guessed by the fact the team is still around after a year despite hurdle after hurdle ... we love TRBO and genuinely want to see its awesome community benefit from its popularity. Many have also stuck with TRBO through the good times and the bad so we want to reward them as best we can – by making TRBO great and a coin to be proud of.
More details to follow – for now please use our social media channels for pressing questions and the team will answer as best we can.
