WHY Quark's "Money Burn" Didn't Work, Econ Student Explains

Ok, so I'm not an econ student. But I did take a semester of economics in college, so here we go.

Qwark developer's told everyone vie their white paper and twitter that they would
"burn" half of the supply of Qwark on August 18th, 2017.
Theoretically, the price should have gone up.
Here's why it didn't.

The Qwark that was destroyed was in fact burned, however this Qwark already belonged to the developers. If it had been bought back with bitcoin or money, the price would have doubled. However, this Qwark was not in public circulation. So it would have been as if the United States decided to burn half their money, but they only used money that was already in the mint. The inflation rate of the dollar would go down to zero for that time period but the value of the dollar would not have gone up, because the money was not already in circulation.

For this reason I think Qwark is a pump and dump, what do you think?