Why On Earth Are People Still Buying Squid Game?

The crypto market is still the Wild West.

That’s what people need to remember when putting their money into any digital currency. whether that currency is Bitcoin or something named after a popular Netflix show.

The Squid Game (SQUID) cryptocurrency has been trending over the last couple of days, according to CoinMarketCap, despite the coin being spectacularly outed as a scam earlier in the week. This, of course begs the question: why?

Image Source: © Shahurin | Megapixl.com

SQUID’s Spectacular Fall From Grace 

In its short life span, which began in late  October, Squid Game garnered the enthusiasm of a portion of the crypto world before having its price plummet to zero – a drop which coincided with the coin’s so-called developers deleting their website as well as all their social media accounts in what appeared to be a classic rug pull (a move where scammers take all their investor’s money and disappear).

The Squid Game crypto’s developers promised an online NFT-driven game,  inspired by the games seen in the Netflix series of the same name, which has become a cultural phenomenon since it was released in September.

Why are people still buying Squid Game Crypto?

It sounds like a good idea. The problem was, the Squid Game crypto was not affiliated with Netflix or the creators of the show, which it would have needed to be if it was to operate as a revenue making enterprise based on the TV series. This was just one of many red flags that more savvy investors identified not long after the coin’s initial launch.

Yet another worrying sign was the host of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors littered throughout the whitepaper (a document outlining the crypto’s purpose and development).

And the coup de grâce, the fact that holders of the Squid Game token were (and still are) unable to sell their SQUID, due to an apparent safeguard built into the crypto’s algorithm which meant that users were (and still are) unable to dump their SQUID holdings.

Tracking SQUID’s Price  

CoinMarketCap features a bold warning on its Squid Game Page, stating they have received multiple reports that the website and socials have been taken down and there is growing evidence that the coin has been “rugged” (the same meaning as rug pull – when the scammers take off with the investor’s money).

If there wasn’t already enough evidence to label the Squid Game token a scam, the story of the coin’s price follows the same basic pattern of every scam coin which has ever been in the market (of which there’s many, unfortunately). The only abnormality being the scale of the scam, which - due to its apparent connection with the hugely popular TV series – attracted a large amount of investment in a short period of time.

The coin entered the market valued at under a cent and quickly rose to two dollars within a few days of its release.

Just two days later, on October 30, the coin was valued at US$12. Two days later still, on November 1, the coin maxed out at US$2,856, before a vertical dive to almost zero as people began to realise it was defunct.

So Why Is This Coin Still Active?  

You’d think once everyone knows that something is a scam, it would lose all its value. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the infamous Squid Game token, which is now priced at US$0.076. One might say “Well, it’s only seven and a half cents”, but that’s not the point. Surely something with no value should be priced at exactly zero.

This leaves only two possibilities: Either, it has value and is, in fact, not a scam, which, while possible, is very very unlikely.

The other possibility is people are not aware that it’s a scam and are being sucked in by the SQUID GAME brand name.

Sadly, the second is much more likely, which points to a troubling reality of the crypto market. Namely, many investors and traders have absolutely no idea about what they’re sinking their money into.

According to one Newsweek article, one Squid Game crypto investor sank his life savings into the coin – some US$28,000 – before the coin crashed.

Whether that’s true or not, it seems there are a lot of clueless investors out there and people need to exercise vigilance and caution when investing in a largely unregulated market.