TL;DR Breakdown
- Squid Game inspired meme coin price crashes 99.99%
- Developers did a ‘rug-pull’ on the project, fleeing with $2.5m liquid cash.
- There were multiple cautions from CoinMarketCap and experts earlier this week suggesting that it’s a scam coin.
Developers have finally pulled the plug on the Squid Game-inspired meme coin SQUID. The crypto-token inspired by the most-watched Netflix series in history was launched on October 27th at a starting price of only $0.012.
Within less than a week of its release, the SQUID token went up 90000% reaching $2856 earlier today, before dropping straight to zero. Needless to say, the optimistic investors who were dreaming big with this coin, won’t have a good sleep tonight.
How did this happen?
The anonymous developers behind this meme coin literally pulled off a money heist, by liquidating all the investor’s money and shutting down the project. Reportedly, the developers have run away with $2.5 million. This is commonly known as a ‘rug pull’ in the crypto industry.
Shady developers often use a backdoor code in their project, which allows the team to remove the liquid cash invested in the project and basically run away with the profits. This is exactly what happened in this case.
But it wasn’t a surprise. There were multiple red flags and warnings against the SQUID token, cautioning investors from buying the cryptocurrency. Just 2 days after its launch, CoinMarketCap reported multiple users were unable to see the SQUID token on Pancakeswap.
SQUID’s official Telegram channel and Twitter account also did not allow anyone to reply or comment on the posts. Although the token was inspired by the popular Netflix show, it didn’t have any official affiliation with Netflix or the Squid Game production house.
This wasn’t the first rug-pull in the crypto industry. Earlier this year, scammers pulled off a similar incident with the MANDO coin, which was a cryptocurrency inspired by the popular Disney+ series, Mandalorian. Just like the SQUID coin, MANDO also didn’t have any affiliation with Disney and users weren’t able to sell the coin.
What was the SQUID coin project?
The SQUID coin was launched as a play to earn cryptocurrency. The meme token would’ve been a part of the Squid Game online tournament project, scheduled to be launched in November. Developers explained that players of the game will be able to earn SQUID coins as they progress through each stage of the tournament. However, they would need to hold a certain amount of SQUID tokens to register for the tournament.
The play-to-earn model and the hype of the popular Netflix show got investors and crypto enthusiasts rallying up to buy the coin since last week. However, all hope seems to be lost, as developers have pulled the rug on the project.
Unfortunately, the SQUID coin will only be remembered as one of the numerous scam projects in crypto history.
