Squid Game Cryptocurrency Scam: Developers make off with $3.3million
A digital currency based on the popular Netflix series “Squid Game” is trading at $0 after its creators cashed out, effectively stealing an estimated $2.1 million from investors.
The cryptocurrency, appropriately called SQUID, surged as high as $2,861 before falling to $0 as of Monday, according to CoinMarketCap.
The scam is called a “rug pull.” That means the crypto’s creators cash out of their coins in exchange for real money, quickly devaluing the crypto’s value.
Before the rug pull, the crypto’s market cap was a little more than $2 million, according to CoinMarketCap.
The SQUID crypto coin was launched just last week and included plenty of red flags, including a three-week-old website filled with bizarre spelling and grammatical errors. The website, hosted at SquidGame.cash, has disappeared, along with every other social media presence set up by the scammers.
Other red flags included the fact that SQUID’s Telegram channel, set up by the unknown scammers, didn’t allow comments from outsiders. And the Twitter account made it impossible for anyone to reply to posts.
Netflix (NFLX) told CNN Business last week that it was not affiliated with the cryptocurrency, and declined to comment further.