In a very Squid Game-esk turn of events, a Squid Game inspired cryptocurrency plunges to $0, awarding scammer with millions.
Anonymous creators of Squid cryptocurrency have made off with anywhere between $2.6 m and $3.38 m after an apparent ‘rug pull’ scam.
The term ‘rug pull’ is when owners of a cryptocurrency project abandon it and steal the investor’s money.
The new crypto coin was sitting at $3,795 on Monday evening after surging by 310,000% in a matter of hours. By the end of the night, Squid was completely worthless.
On the 1st of November, the reported $3.36 million that had been invested into Squid was yanked out of the project by its creators and within 10 minutes the coin was trading at one-third of a cent.
Many in the cryptocurrency community had called out the new coin as an obvious scam when investors were able to purchase the crypto but weren’t able to sell it.
MAN HOW CAN YOU WATCH SQUID GAME, A SHOW ABOUT THE PROBLEMS OF CAPITALISM AND GAMBLING RUNING LIFES, AND PARTICIPATE IN A CRYPTO TOKEN SQUID GAME "IRL"
LIKE FFS THE MEANING OF THE SHOW??? HOW DID YOU WATCH THE WHOLE THING AND NOT GET IT??????
Crypto was a mistake fr— Spiral👆 (Live2D rigger) (@spiral_hero) November 3, 2021
When the Squid Game crypto launched in late October, the whitepaper, a document that explains and promotes a company’s product or service, claimed the platform was a ‘play to earn’ game inspired by the Korean Netflix series ‘Squid Game’.
The TV show, not affiliated with the cryptocurrency, tells the story of hundreds of indebted contestants competing in a deadly series of children’s games for a large cash prize.
It’s not uncommon for new cryptocurrencies to mimic popular moments in the zeitgeist. Cryptos like Dogecoin and the Shiba Inu coin have been called ‘meme tokens’ and despite some success, many crypto experts suggest avoiding investing in these.
It’s not surprising to see Squid game added to that list of meme coins after the show shot its way to the top of Netflix’s most–watched series in a little more than a month.
The project’s whitepaper, published on its now deactivated website, sounded very promising to users, however, may have hidden a couple of clues that it was in fact a scam.
When comparing its own rules to the rules of the Netflix hit show, the whitepaper stated, “More importantly, we do not provide deadly consequences apparently! Your experience will only reflect on the joy of winning rewards and sorrow of losing money when the game failed.”
“I lost all of what I had in this project“, an anonymous Squid investor told CoinMarketCap after investing $6,641 into the cryptocurrency.
While many crypto aficionados are well aware of the risks involved and even praise cryptocurrencies for being a free market, many others are saying regulation is required in this $2.6 trillion industry to stop scams like this.
