Squid Game crypto token collapses in value, website disappears in apparent scam

Inspired by Netflix's popular show Squid Game, cryptocurrency token Squid was on a continual rise since its launch. However, the value of a coin inspired by the popular show collapsed on Monday within two weeks after investors began buying the tokens. Having jumped more than 310,000 per cent in value as of Sunday night, the Squid token plunged in value after Twitter flagged the cryptocurrency’s account for “suspicious activity”.

Inspired by the Netflix show Squid Game, the crypto coin was trading at $2.85 with a market capitalisation of over $175 million right before its collapse. The coin surged continually in the past week to become one of the hot tokens among traders. Now, the value of the token has dropped and its website and social accounts have suddenly disappeared, along with a white paper describing Squid.

Launched on October 20, the cryptocurrency was said to be a pay-to-play token to play an online game. In the description of how the ‘Game’ worked, Squid token website had explained, “you have to do is participate in the presale, the top 10 presale holders (based on the amount of holdings) will be given VIP entrance to our game application. The Squid Token application will have a prize pool, the prize pool will be 2% of the amount raised on the presale and 10 of you will be able to participate in the games in the application and 3 of you will split the prize pool. All you have to do is play and survive."

“It also follows the same format of games in the actual series, explaining that after “the presale is over, the top 10 holders will be moving on to our application where they will be playing 3 games, each of those games will be giving points to the top 3 positions and after the 3 games the 3 holders with the most amount of points will be splitting the prize pool. The games will be anonymous until you reach the point of playing but will be well-known games to everyone and you will have a short description of each game before starting," read the description on the website.

The game was set to launch in November and the promoters of the coin had said that the winners would be rewarded with more Squid tokens. However, many cryptocurrency coin market sites including CoinMarketCap had issued warning against the coin of being fraudulent. Now, the value has plunged and the coin’s website and its accounts on social media sites have vanished.

'Discontinuing due to stress of dealing with scammers,' claims Squid developers

According to Coindesk, the developers of the project, through its official Telegram channel have claimed that it was being discontinued due to the stress of dealing with scammers. “Someone is trying to hack our project these days. Not only the Twitter account @GoGoSquidGame but also our smart contract. We are trying to protect it but the price is still abnormal. Squid Game Dev does not want to continue running the project as we are depressed from the scammers and is overwhelmed with stress. We have to remove all the restrictions and the transaction rules of Squid Game. Squid Game will enter a new stage of community autonomy,” it wrote. However, traders have already launched complaints against the token for being a scam from the get-go.

CoinMarketCap issued a warning against Squid Game coin

Notably, CoinMarketCap had issued a warning that there were multiple reports of users not being able to sell their Squid game crypto tokens through the exchange Pancakeswap. There has been no clarification regarding the same but the Squid's whitepaper does suggest that it has an anti-dumping technology that prevents the sale of the coins unless the participants meet certain conditions. 

Image: Twitter/ Unsplash