What is Zugacoin (SZCB)? The Truth Behind Africa's Most Controversial Crypto Coin

What is Zugacoin (SZCB)? The Truth Behind Africa's Most Controversial Crypto Coin

What if you heard about a cryptocurrency that claims to be Africa’s first digital coin, powers loans for small businesses, and even pays for hospital bills - but no one actually owns it? That’s Zugacoin (SZCB). It’s listed on exchanges, has a price, and even has a website. But if you dig deeper, the whole thing starts to fall apart.

It’s Supposed to Be Africa’s First Crypto - But It’s Not

Zugacoin says it’s the first African cryptocurrency on the blockchain. That sounds powerful. But it’s not true. South Africa’s Qoin was launched in 2018. Nigeria’s Kudi came out in 2019. Both were built to help local communities with payments and financial access. Zugacoin didn’t come until 2020 - and even then, it didn’t deliver anything real.

The project claims it was created to fix Africa’s biggest problem: access to loans. The idea? Use blockchain to give entrepreneurs small loans without banks. Sounds good. But there’s no proof any loan has ever been issued. No names. No businesses helped. No transaction records. Just a whitepaper reference that doesn’t link to anything.

Conflicting Tech Claims: Own Blockchain or Ethereum?

This is where things get messy. Coinbase says Zugacoin is an ERC-20 token - meaning it runs on Ethereum, like most other tokens. That’s standard. You can send it through MetaMask, store it in Trust Wallet, and trade it on any exchange that supports Ethereum-based coins.

But CoinPaprika says Zugacoin runs on its own blockchain with “dual-layer technology” that makes transactions faster. That’s a red flag. A coin can’t be both on Ethereum and its own blockchain. They’re completely different systems. If it were on its own chain, you’d see blocks being mined, a public explorer, and developer activity on GitHub. You won’t find any of that.

And here’s the kicker: Coinbase says the token was launched on September 1, 2020. CoinPaprika says 2021. Which one’s right? Neither can be verified. No official blog post. No press release. No GitHub commits. No developer tweets. Just conflicting data on third-party sites.

The Circulating Supply Is Zero - But It’s Still Trading

Here’s the most damning detail: Coinbase states clearly that the circulating supply of Zugacoin is 0 SZCB. That means no tokens are in anyone’s wallet. Not one. So how can it be trading?

Look at the prices:

  • CoinMarketCap: $0.02531
  • CoinPaprika: $0.027483
  • Bitmama: $0.027
  • Binance: $0.027259
  • Crypto.com: $0.02948
  • Coinbase: $0.0708

That’s a 180% difference between the lowest and highest price. If this were a real market, prices would be within 1-2% of each other. This kind of spread only happens when there’s no real trading - just bots, fake volume, or data scraping.

And Coinbase says the market cap is $0.00. But CoinMarketCap and others list a market cap of around $25,000. How? If supply is zero, market cap can’t be anything but zero. This contradiction isn’t a mistake - it’s a sign the data is either fake or completely unmanaged.

Empty African buildings under a gray sky with a broken blockchain link on the ground.

The All-Time High of 0,677.19? That’s Impossible

Here’s a quote from Coinbase: “Zugacoin is valued at 100.00% below its all-time high of $210,677.19.”

Let’s do the math. Zugacoin’s max supply is 1,000,000 tokens. If one token was ever worth $210,677.19, the total market cap would be $210,677,190,000. That’s over $210 billion. For reference, Bitcoin’s all-time high market cap was around $1.3 trillion. So Zugacoin would have been worth 16% of Bitcoin’s peak value - with 1 million tokens, no team, no adoption, and no infrastructure.

That’s not just unlikely. It’s mathematically impossible. No serious analyst, exchange, or blockchain researcher would accept that number. It’s either a glitch, a scam, or someone manually entered a fake number into a database.

Who Uses It? No One

Zugacoin claims it’s used to pay for schools, hospitals, supermarkets, and government services in Africa. Sounds impressive. But no school in Nigeria, Kenya, or South Africa has ever publicly accepted it. No hospital website lists SZCB as a payment option. No government portal mentions it.

And there are zero user reviews. No Reddit threads. No Twitter conversations. No Telegram groups with more than 50 members. No YouTube tutorials. No Medium articles explaining how to use it. If a cryptocurrency has real utility, people talk about it. Zugacoin has silence.

Trading volume? On CoinMarketCap, it’s $0. On most exchanges, it’s under $100 per day. For comparison, a tiny but real African crypto like Bundle (Nigeria) trades over $5 million daily. Zugacoin doesn’t even register as a blip.

A faceless figure holding a whitepaper atop fake exchange logos, with a zero supply meter and warning sign.

Why Does It Still Exist on Exchanges?

If it’s worthless, why is it still listed?

Because some exchanges - especially smaller ones - list coins with no oversight. They make money from listing fees, not trading volume. Once a coin is listed, they don’t care if it’s dead. They just keep the fee.

Some of these listings are outright scams. Others are just lazy. The project team might have paid a few hundred dollars to get listed on CoinPaprika and Bitmama. Then they vanished. But the listings? They stay up forever.

It’s like buying a domain name, putting up a website that says “We sell flying cars,” and then disappearing. The site still loads. The price is still listed. But no one’s buying. No one’s flying.

What Should You Do?

If you’re thinking of buying Zugacoin: don’t.

It’s not a bad investment because it’s going to crash. It’s a bad investment because it never existed in the first place. You can’t lose money on something that has no value - because there’s nothing to lose.

If you’re researching African crypto projects, look at real ones:

  • Bundle (BND) - Nigerian crypto for remittances and business payments
  • VALR (VALR) - South African exchange with real liquidity and regulatory compliance
  • Remitano (RMN) - Peer-to-peer crypto trading platform used across Africa

These projects have active teams, public GitHub repos, real trading volume, and user testimonials. Zugacoin has none of that.

Final Verdict: A Ghost Coin

Zugacoin (SZCB) is a ghost. It has a name, a symbol, a price, and listings - but no substance. No users. No transactions. No team. No code. No real-world use. Just data on websites that don’t verify anything.

It’s a textbook example of how crypto scams work: create a compelling story (“Africa’s first coin!”), use vague technical jargon (“dual-layer blockchain!”), list on shady exchanges, and hope someone buys in before the truth comes out.

Don’t be that person. If a coin sounds too good to be true - and its numbers don’t add up - it’s not a hidden gem. It’s a trap.