Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Nov.2: Following the success of the South Korean survival drama series Squid Game, a cryptocurrency dedicated to the mini television series dubbed “Squidgame Cash” or “SQUID” was added to the crypto-pool.
After SQUID designers stunted out a classic “rug pull,” the value of this coin plummeted by 99.99 percent in recent hours. This is a scheme in which developers leave a project and defraud investors.
On October 30, the crypto-coin saw a 300 percent increase in value, but it has since lost that value, falling from $2,800 (Rs. 2 lakh) to its current price of $0.003347. (roughly Rs. 0.25).
According to a report by Gizmodo, the scammers are thought to have made over $3.3 million (around Rs. 22 crore) from this project.
An online version of the Squid Game was established online, inspired by the survival series, and participants were obliged to use the SQUID crypto token to play. The SQUID tokens were met with pyrotechnics in the market due to the popularity of the Netflix series.
However, suspicions about the authenticity of the SQUID token arose almost immediately because it was only possible to buy the crypto-coin, not sell it.
The SQUID token’s website, which was registered on October 12th, less than a month ago, has suddenly been taken down.
“We’ve got many complaints that the website and social media accounts are down, and that users are unable to sell this token on Pancakeswap. Please do your own research and proceed with caution. This project is certainly inspired by the Netflix show of the same name, but it is not associated with the actual IP,” according to a banner on CoinMarketCap.
While the scammers behind this crypto rug-pull have yet to be identified, the news has caused a stir on social media.
This isn’t the first time a popular TV show has been hijacked by well-known cybercriminals to defraud its viewers.
Scammers targeted fans of Disney’s Mandalorian streaming drama earlier this year with a crypto-token called “Mando” – which turned out to be a pump-and-dump scheme, according to news portals at the time.
A research published in April estimated that total crypto criminality in 2020 will be over $10.52 billion (roughly Rs. 79,194 crores).
Scams and frauds have plagued the crypto-space and are a huge problem, accounting for 67.8% of total bitcoin crime in 2020, according to the same estimate.
According to a recent analysis by analyst firm ‘Chainalysis’, at least $815 million (approximately Rs. 6,135 crores) in crypto was paid to fraud projects in Eastern European countries between July 2020 and June 2021.
