By Jasper Hamill
A cryptocurrency inspired by the Korean Netflix show Squid Game has experienced an astonishing price rally last week. But investors have been urged to be extremely cautious about the SQUID token, which is currently available on the decentralized trading site Pancake Swap.
The creators of SQUID claim that it can be bought and used to enter a “play-to-earn” game based on the series, which tells the story of a deadly tournament in which players fight to the death.
“Everyone here in the crypto world can participate in the Squid Game with SQUID token or related NFTs in our marketplace,” the creators of SQUID wrote in a “white paper” penned in broken English.
“Compared to $38.5 million bonus for the last winner, we crypto Squid Game will not limit the maximum of the final bonus as well as the numbers of participates.
“The more people join, the larger reward pool will be. More importantly, we do not provide deadly consequences apparently! Your experience will only reflect on the joy of winning rewards and sorrow of losing money when the game failed.”
Players who buy SQUID will be able to use it to enter six games, with the eventual winner handed a huge prize. Or at least that’s the claim.
In the white paper describing SQUID, its creators said 10% of the entry fee will be sent to the developers’ wallet and the remaining 90% will be added to the reward pool, which will be handed to the winner of the final game.
The six games are supposed to be launching in November and include a challenge that involves singing a song that translates to “the mugunghwa flower has bloomed”, referring to the national flower of Korea.
One game will allegedly invite players to cut shapes out of honeycomb candy, whilst the final challenge is a “version of tag”.
The game has certainly excited the crypto world. One week ago, Squid was worth just $0.012. Since then, it has shot up in price by roughly 90,000% to hit $11.48 at the time of writing.
This would be great news for investors - if they were able to trade the token.
Right now, people who bought the cryptocurrency cannot sell their SQUID holdings, prompting the crypto asset price-tracking website CoinMarketCap to issue the following warning: “We have received multiple reports that users are not able to sell this token in Pancakeswap.
“Please do your own due diligence and exercise caution while trading! This project, while clearly inspired by the Netflix show of the same name, is unlikely to be affiliated with the official IP.”
The SQUID Twitter account has also been “temporarily restricted”.
SQUID’s creators claim players of the game will be able to sell their tokens after being rewarded with NFTs called “Marbles”.
They wrote: “Marbles the key for Squid Game. Obtaining Marbles without using violence is the key to Squid Game.
“Marbles holders will have the right to trade SQUID freely. For example, if you hold some Marbles, you can sell a certain amount of SQUID at any time you want on PancakeSwap. After you sell some SQUID those Marbles in your wallet will be automatically burned.”
“At the same time, the equivalent amount of $Marbles in the Marbles-WBNB trading pair will also be automatically burned which means the price of $Marbles will pump.”
However, the games have not yet begun, meaning people cannot earn Marbles and sell their SQUID.
Unless something changes and the games begin, it looks like there is something very fishy about SQUID, which has now been accused of being a scam. We’ll keep you updated if anything changes.
