Squid Game crypto scam reels in $3.3m

Popular South Korean drama Squid Game by Netflix, has spread to the crypto world with anonymous creators listing a token named Squid, which has now vanished.

Marketing itself as a play-to-earn cryptocurrency, the coin struck home with fans of the show where a bunch of people are kidnapped and forced to participate in a series of trials to survive.

Squid started strong, amassing more than $3m in funds from hopeful investors. At one point, people started doubting the project’s intentions.

As it turns out, people were unable to resell their tokens, which is commonly associated with “rug pulls” type of scams whereby investors’ money are stolen by the developers of projects.

This is precisely what happened with Squid developers disappearing into thin air with $3.38m as public discontent and the questions over the project kept on climbing.

Squid’s quick rise was impressive, with the currency going from less than $0.01 last week to $2,856 in just the space of a few days.

However, Squid’s value has depreciated by 99.99% according to CoinMarketCap, a crypto data company that tracks individual token movements.

While the Squid debacle is another blow to the legitimacy of the currency, crypto experts did warn consumers to be wary of it.

The fact that nobody could resell their tokens was the first red flag. Critics also went on to explain that the website was poorly executed with grammatical and spelling mistakes on the home page.

According to Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad, it was a common trick to dupe people out of money. “It is one of many schemes by which naïve retail investors are drawn in and exploited by malevolent crypto promoters”, he remarked.

There has been no news about Squid. Crypto scams have been quite common. In one instance, Los Angeles Avengers Brian Nguyen lost $470,000 on Ankh, a decentralized finance crypto token.

In another story, a Coinbase user lost $11.6m in 10 minutes after becoming the victim of fake notification scam.

To stay safe, always use verified websites such as Bitcasino, 1xBit and FortuneJack for recreational purposes, for example, and never give in to FOMO, the fear of missing out on a good thing. It usually costs dearly.

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Written by Barney

Co-founder

Barney is co-founder of CryptoGamblingNews.com. When not at work he can usually be found behind a Nikon. He's won numerous international competitions for his photography and volunteers as a content creator for aid organisations in Africa.

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