Shockingly, A 'Squid Game' Cryptocurrency Was A Scam, And Its Creators Escaped With $3.3 Million

In yet another shocking turn of events, a group of crypto enthusiasts have been bamboozled by scammers hocking a Squid Game token to the tune of $3.38 million.

The token entered public consciousness last week when it soared in value over the course of a week, generating mainstream media attention, but those in the know almost immediately recognized the scam.

For starters, cryptocurrencies named after popular media properties without permission have a history of being scams. Gizmodo pointed out on Friday that earlier this year, a cryptocurrency called "Mando" after The Mandalorian proved to be a scam. Furthermore, the website for the Squid Game crypto, SquidGame.cash, appeared to be hastily put together and was rife with grammar and spelling errors, such as:

The Squid Game project is a crypto play to earn platform inspired by the Korean hit series on Netflix about a deadly tournament of children’s games. There is no longer dystopian world where a mysterious organisation gathers people who are in large amounts of debt and “living on the edge”.

However, the part that made the fraudulence of the scam perhaps most obvious was the fact that buyers could put money into the Squid Game crypto but not take money out. After the anonymous scammers generated $3.38 million in assets, they performed a "rug pull" or "exit scam," meaning they cashed out and left no liquidity in the Squid Game token exchange. Put another way: they made the tokens worthless.

The website and the Squid Game crypto Twitter account disappeared after the value reached over $2,800 a token. One investor told CoinMarketCap they "lost all they had" on the currency.

Onlookers on Twitter who watched the scam unfold joked about the marks falling for what seemed like an obvious scam.