The unknown swindlers behind a Squid Game cryptocurrency have finally yanked the rug out from under the project, stealing $2.1 million in the process. Remember how Gizmodo warned you on Friday morning that it was a clear scam? It was only obvious because investors could buy but not sell the cryptocurrency. However, many people did not receive the warning in time.
Scammers steal $2.1 Million
According to the website CoinMarketCap, the SQUID cryptocurrency peaked at $2,861 before falling to $0 at about 5:40 a.m. ET. This type of crime, dubbed a “rug pull” by crypto investors, occurs when the cryptocurrency’s inventors swiftly cash out their coins for real money, emptying the exchange’s liquidity pool.
The SQUID cryptocurrency was only released last week, and it came with a slew of red flags, including a three-week-old website riddled with weird spelling and grammatical problems. The website, housed at SquidGame.cash, as well as the scammers’ other social media accounts, has vanished. An archived version of the website can be found here.
Other red flags included the fact that SQUID’s Telegram channel, which was put up by unknown scammers, did not accept outsider comments. It was also hard for anyone to respond to messages on the Twitter account.
The fact that no one who bought the coin was able to sell it was the biggest red flag. That didn’t stop the BBC, Yahoo News, Business Insider, Fortune, and CNBC from publishing stories on how the new Squid Game cryptocurrency had risen by 83,000 percent in just a few days. This is just the latest example of scammers utilizing pop culture to get media attention.
Scammers enjoy the crypto sector because it’s so tough to tell who’s a scammer and who’s trying to make a legitimate cryptocurrency possibly because the idea of creating your currency is inherently dishonest.
Traditional currency has been essentially the domain of governments throughout recorded history for a reason. Everyone in a particular society must agree that a currency is valuable, and few institutions outside of government can lend legitimacy to something so crucial. Libertarians will argue that this isn’t the case, but we’ll have to disagree on this.
Is this to say that you won’t be able to profit from cryptocurrency trading? Many people are making real money in the crypto sector by selling “popular” coins like Bitcoin or even smaller coins like Shiba Inu, which has recently soared in price.
However, just because individuals are generating money from it now does not indicate it will continue to exist in the future. Cryptocurrency will only be able to survive if people believe it is genuine money.
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