Squid Game, being the hottest thing on Netflix, naturally would have its name hijacked for things of more nefarious natures. Unfortunately for cryptocurrency afficionados, one of this comes in the form of a scam cryptocurrency, simply called SQUID. Having launched late last week, it skyrocketed in value before plummeting all the way down to nothing.
CoinMarketCap indicated that the people behind the SQUID coin did what is known as a rug-pull, luring investors to drive up the price of the coin before running away with the cash. And it’s done to great effectiveness too, having valued at its peak at US$2856 (~RM11760). In total, Gizomodo estimates that the scammers have made off with about US$3.38 million (~RM14 million).
All that being said, there were reportedly a few obvious red flags that the victim investors missed. One is the inability to sell SQUID coins after buying them. They are instead used as tokens to play a game, which earned them another cryptocurrency that they could sell instead. Then there’s the entry fee of 456 SQUID coins for the game.
Bottom line is, be very careful of unlikely offshoots of popular things in the media. Just like it was last year when an obviously fake mobile version of Cyberpunk 2077 showed up.
(Source: CoinMarketCap [1], [2], Gizmodo)
