Last week, a new Squid Game-inspired cryptocurrency called SQUID made huge waves when it jumped over 75,000% (from $0.012 on Tuesday to $9.19) in less than a week.
Now, however, it is being reported that SQUID was essentially a scam.
According to a report by Gizmondo, SQUID peaked at a price of $2,861 on Monday morning before immediately plummeting to $0 around 5:40 a.m. This dramatic decrease comes as a result of what Gizmondo called a "rug pull," which is when "creators of the crypto quickly cash out their coins for real money, draining the liquidity pool from the exchange."
Despite a ton of reported red flags, "including a three-week old website filled with bizarre spelling and grammatical errors," investors were still all-in on SQUID, purchasing the cryptocurrency at rapid rates all throughout last week. Unfortunately, many were sorely disappointed when the crypto plummeted to $0 and left high and dry. According to Gizmondo, the creators of the SQUID deleted their SquidGame.cash website, all affiliated social media accounts, and made off with an estimated $3.38 million.
While it is clear that the creators of SQUID pulled off a multi-million dollar scam, what happens next is not. A ton of investors lost a ton of money, but according to Complex, there were many warnings when it came to SQUID — the first being that the cryptocurrency had no real connection with the show itself.
"We have received multiple reports that the website and socials are no longer functional & the users are not able to sell this token in Pancakeswap,” crypto website CoinMarketCap warned before the scam went full-force. “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.”
Whether investors will be able to recoup any of their lost funds is unknown. It's clear that there were red flags and warnings surrounding SQUID, and that investors simply did not listen. And with major media companies covering the emergence of SQUID without any criticism, an echo chamber was created, leading to more and more investors pouring money into the now-defunct cryptocurrency.
Stay tuned for updates on this story.