The “Squid Game” cryptocurrency, a multi-million dollar scam – Trust My Science

A cryptocurrency called Squid Game, in reference to the popular Korean series, has just collapsed. End of game for the unfortunate investors, who will have been the victims of a scam worth several million euros on the part of its founders. The latter went out of business this Monday, November 1, taking with them colossal funds.

The Squid Game cryptocurrency launched quite recently: October 20, 2021, to be precise. On sale for around a cent of a dollar in its infancy, it quickly soared to reach the highest level of $ 2,861. This virtual currency will not have lasted long, however, since its creators closed shop on November 1. At the same time, they revealed to the world the scam they had been concocting from the start. According to the American site Gizmodo, they did not leave with empty pockets, since they took with them some $ 3.3 million.

© @_tricck (Twitter)

The cryptocurrency site CoinMarketCap, which has received numerous alerts from Internet users, clearly displays it: “We have received several reports indicating that the website and social networks (note: of the Squid Game cryptocurrency) are no longer functional and that the users are not able to sell their tokens in Pancakeswap. It is increasingly evident that this project has been the subject of a rug sweater. Please make all necessary checks and exercise extreme caution. This project, although clearly inspired by the Netflix show of the same name, is NOT affiliated with the official series ”.

what is a rug sweater ?

The maneuver carried out by the founders of the cryptocurrency Squid Game is called “rug pull”, or literally “pull the carpet” in French. This is a form of fraud rather well-known in the circles of cryptocurrency.

Very concretely, it is a matter of creating a currency, waiting for it to increase in value, then suddenly reselling all of its assets. This obviously had the effect of considerably enriching the creators of the project, but also of collapsing its course.

In a fairly classic way, when there is a lot more supply than demand in a market, prices fall… After this juicy operation, the founders have lowered the curtain. They closed their website and their social networks, and took with them the funds of those who had invested, several million dollars.

At the time of writing, the Squid Game price is showing at 0.005 cents, after hitting bottom at 0.003 cents. Even for those who bought this currency in its infancy, the operation is loss-making.

To boost their cryptocurrency, its creators had made it simply not possible to resell the purchased Squid Games, also artificially inflating their price. Indeed, the sellers were careful not to explain the procedure to be followed to resell its assets. The American site Mashable explains that those who wanted to convert their investments had to first exchange them for another virtual currency called Marble, making the operation unprofitable. This other cryptocurrency quickly followed the same path as the Squid Game …

What were the warning signs?

For informed internet users, however, it was possible to sniff out the scam. Moreover, the media Gizmodo had alerted potential investors before the Squid’s price collapsed. First of all, the site had been created very recently before the launch of the cryptocurrency.

The latter, although named after the popular series of the moment, had no official connection with Netflix. Affiliate social media chat channels were also locked down so there could be no discussion about the Squid. Finally, even the specialized site CoinMarketCap warned about the difficulties encountered by buyers to reconvert their investment.

So, why such a success for the Squid Game cryptocurrency? Of course, the soaring of courses was rather enticing for uninformed Internet users. However, as Gizmodo reproaches, many American media, surfing on the success of the Squid Game series, also contributed to the success of this scam: “The most obvious warning signal was that no buyer could resell. That hasn’t stopped mainstream media like the BBC, Yahoo News, Business Insider, Fortune and CNBC from making headlines about how the new cryptocurrency Squid Game had soared 83,000% in just a few days, ”says The media.