‘Squid Game’-inspired crypto scam crumbles, price crashes from $2.8K to zero

SQUID, a new digital coin inspired by the blockbuster Netflix series, Squid Game, has scammed investors to the tune of $3.38-million in what appears to be a rug pull.

The cryptocurrency plunged to almost a fraction of a cent minutes after surpassing $2,850 at 09:35 UTC on Nov. 1. The deadly drop came at the back of a 75,000% bull run, highlighting the outrageous demand for SQUID among traders since it launched on Oct. 26.

Inspired by the popularity of the Squid Game series, the cyberpunks promoted SQUID as a play-to-earn cryptocurrency, just like in the movie where people risk their lives to play a series of children’s games for cash bounty.

This strategy helped push SQUID prices from $0.01 on Oct. 26 to over $38 on Sunday. It then spiked to $90 on Nov. 1, leading to a massive pumping round that forced its price further up over $2,850, only for it to plunge all the way down to $0.002 a few minutes later.

Prior to the massive crash, BTC PEERS reported that users were unable to sell their SQUID holdings on PancakeSwap, the only available market amid a 45,000% gain.

The SQUID founders stated in their defense that they had deployed an “anti-dumping technology” that limits people from selling their tokens against lower demand. The Squid Game whitepaper reads:

The more people join, the larger reward pool will be (sic), […] Developers will take 10% of the entry fee with the remaining 90% given to the winner.

CNBC also published the SQUID token founders’ claims without omissions, as it called SQUID the “very own brand” of the Netflix show.

The Squid Game cryptocurrency founders claimed they were affiliated with the Netflix show as its official token partner. They also insisted that they had entered a strategic partnership with crypto data provider CoinGecko.

However, CoinGecko co-founder Bobby Ong refuted the claims in an interview, saying “[SQUID] did not meet our listing criteria; hence it will not be listed on CoinGecko. It’s most likely a scam.”

CoinGecko’s rival CoinMarketCap listed SQUID on its platform with a warning about the cryptocurrency’s dubious nature in a notice that read:

There is growing evidence that this project has rugged. Please do your own due diligence and exercise extreme caution. This project, while clearly inspired by the Netflix show of the same name, is NOT affiliated with the official IP.

Meanwhile, analysts noticed that the founders of the token had no profiles on LinkedIn, with a Twitter user calling SQUID a “100% rug pull.”

So far, it seems like the game is indeed over for SQUID holders, and the only winners are the malicious actors behind the project.