What just happened? A cryptocurrency named after Netflix's recent smash hit series "Squid Game" collapsed in value Monday morning. The group behind the crypto and a platform hosting a game associated with the crypto seems to have completely disappeared.
Whoever was behind the $SQUID crypto seems to have performed what investors call a "rug-pull," in which after luring investors to drive up the price of their crypto, they sell theirs off for cash, removing its liquidity. After SQUID peaked at $2,856 early this morning, it plummeted to zero in only a few minutes, according to CoinMarketCap.
Twitter suspended the account associated with the crypto for "unusual activity." The website where people bought the crypto and used it in a game has disappeared, but is still visible on the Internet archive.
SQUID appeared on October 27 and shot up past $30 by October 31. From the beginning, however, there were obvious red flags.
The biggest one was that people who bought SQUID could not sell it. They could use SQUID as tokens to play a game on the now-vanished website from which they could earn another cyrpto from the same creators -- Marble, which could be sold. So in order to earn their money back, investors had to keep playing and potentially keep buying more SQUID.
According to ConMarketWatch, the entry fee for the game was 456 SQUID. The post quotes multiple investors who lost money from the whole ordeal. According to Gizmodo the sellers made off with around $2.1 million.
Squid Game is a South Korean series that premiered on Netflix in September and has since become the streaming giant's most popular series ever. It's about desperate people who are invited to play childrens' games for a huge cash prize, with life-or-death stakes.
https://www.techspot.com/news/92026-yep-squid-game-crypto-scam.html
