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Bitcoin The Almighty Buck

Squid Game Cryptocurrency Scammers Make Off With $2.1 Million (gizmodo.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the rug-pull dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The anonymous hucksters behind a Squid Game cryptocurrency have officially pulled the rug on the project, making off with an estimated $2.1 million. [...] The SQUID cryptocurrency peaked at a price of $2,861 before plummeting to $0 around 5:40 a.m. ET., according to the website CoinMarketCap. This kind of theft, commonly called a "rug pull" by crypto investors, happens when the creators of the crypto quickly cash out their coins for real money, draining the liquidity pool from the exchange.

The SQUID crypto coin was launched just last week and included plenty of red flags, including a three-week old website filled with bizarre spelling and grammatical errors. The website, hosted at SquidGame.cash, has disappeared, along with every other social media presence set up by the scammers. You can see an archived version of the website here. Other red flags included the fact that SQUID's Telegram channel, set up by the unknown scammers, didn't allow comments from outsiders. And the Twitter account made it impossible for anyone to reply to posts.
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Squid Game Cryptocurrency Scammers Make Off With $2.1 Million More

Squid Game Cryptocurrency Scammers Make Off With $2.1 Million

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  • Seems like this was an intentional scam... what prevents Bitcoin from doing the same thing?

    • Re: Loser Horns... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by diffract ( 7165501 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @05:29PM (#61949105)
      Because there's nobody capable of doing a bitcoin rugpull, no one can prevent anyone from making a bitcoin transaction. People were allowed to buy this crypto but not allowed to sell, blame ethereum for making it possible for these "smart contract" shitcoins to exist. Traditional PoW coins don't have a single entity controlling every damn thing

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Suuuure, because we haven't had Bitcoin exchanges going poof with people's money in the past.

      • Because there's nobody capable of doing a bitcoin rugpull

        Not directly, but as far as the market is concerned there would be no difference. If Satoshi suddenly cashed out, or heck if the Winklevoss twins cashed out, it would have the same effect as a rug pull to the majority of people.

        The sudden loss of such an incredible amount of liquidity would trigger a massive panic sell. The people who started would win. The people with resources and speed would break even. The common person is left with nothing.

        A single entity may not control something, but that doesn't mea

    • Seems like this was an intentional scam... what prevents Bitcoin from doing the same thing?

      Nothing.

      • Re:Loser Horns... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @06:10PM (#61949263)

        Bitcoin is a bit like a strap-less dress on a 80 year old. It's kept up by the collective will of everyone in the room, since there isn't really anything else that would keep it up, because they know if it falls it would be really, really horrible.

        • Bitcoin is a bit like a strap-less dress on a 80 year old. It's kept up by the collective will of everyone in the room, since there isn't really anything else that would keep it up, because they know if it falls it would be really, really horrible.

          Damn - they say there is no such thing as a perfect analogy - looks like you proved that saying wrong! Damn well played, sir. 8^)

  • You all know how the saying goes. Crypto has passed into the mainstream, the "get rich quick" people have taken over. You pretty much have to assume that anything new is a scam. (This, of course, assumes you aren't in the "all crypto is a scam" camp.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Only "anything new"? Oh, you sweet summer child...

    • It makes me sad that there are evil people in the world who would perpetuate such scams. It makes me more sad that, in this day of publicly-available education for everyone, there are SO MANY people who are too stupid to recognize such obvious scams and avoid them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      I think there's something really fitting about the Squid Game cryptocurrency ending with only one winner getting rich and everyone else getting killed.

  • They have a name for it. Like that old John Travolta movie about the Lost nuclear missiles.

  • I hate when people get scammed, but this just makes me laugh.

    • I mean, there are no rules, so in what sense is it a scam? It's just a thing some people did. It's the free market doing its thing without regulation.

  • LOL, I repeat, LOL (Score:3)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @05:33PM (#61949125) Journal

    How dumb do you have to be to plow money into something as shaky and sketchy as this?

    And while we're on the subject, please invest in my new PoopCoin, it's only at $10 right now but I'm sure it'll be worth millions as soon as enough sucke- I mean "investors" get on board!

    • I mean, we have people putting their live savings on Doge/Shiba every other day. There's no shortage of morons out there.

      • I mean, we have people putting their live savings on Doge/Shiba every other day. There's no shortage of morons out there.

        Have you seen the commercials trying to get people to cash in their retirement savings for gold?

        Same thing. As I have tried to explain to some folks, it doesn't matter what gold prices will be 20 years after you're dead, it's what they are worth the day you retire. (note that many retirement plans require to you estimate when you die, and adjust your monthly based on that.)

    • How dumb do you have to be to plow money into something as shaky and sketchy as this?

      And while we're on the subject, please invest in my new PoopCoin, it's only at $10 right now but I'm sure it'll be worth millions as soon as enough sucke- I mean "investors" get on board!

      Never underestimate the stupidity of a lot of humans.

  • Predictable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by imidan ( 559239 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @05:37PM (#61949145)
    Does this even qualify as a scam? I mean, if this autumn, I sold people fallen leaves from my front yard for $1 each with a vague suggestion that leaves might increase in value, and idiots took this offer, would I have scammed them? I feel like there needs to be a floor for credibility below which it's not really a scam as much as just inviting fools to part with money.
    • If you prevented them from selling those leaves then yes you have scammed them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      Does this even qualify as a scam? I mean, if this autumn, I sold people fallen leaves from my front yard for $1 each with a vague suggestion that leaves might increase in value, and idiots took this offer, would I have scammed them? I feel like there needs to be a floor for credibility below which it's not really a scam as much as just inviting fools to part with money.

      Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter!

    • How about if you tell them LeafCoin will hit $10k by Christmas? To the moon!
    • It is if you sold them with the promise that "tomorrow I'm opening a trading post for these special leaves," and then don't deliver.

    • I feel like there needs to be a floor for credibility below which it's not really a scam as much as just inviting fools to part with money.

      What separates a scam from parting fools with their money are your efforts into making sure that transaction will go your way. It's one thing to take someone's money by setting up a financial scheme. It's quite another to completely dissolve that scheme and hide it from the face of the earth when you cash out.

      Much like Theranos's case the difference between investing in uncertainty and fraud is if that investor money goes development of a product or to buying a new necklace for the CEO billed as a company e

  • The only thing that surprises me here is that they pulled the rug so early. Through association with Squid game combined with FOMO, the press coverage and so many fucking morons with more money than brains I think they could have walked away with exponentially more in a week or so. Seems for scammers they were playing it incredibly safe.

    • The only thing that surprises me here is that they pulled the rug so early. Through association with Squid game combined with FOMO, the press coverage and so many fucking morons with more money than brains I think they could have walked away with exponentially more in a week or so. Seems for scammers they were playing it incredibly safe.

      Maybe they could have made more. Or maybe people would have caught on and the value would have plummeted. They were probably also seeing that Squid Game is not number 1 in the US anymore. $2.1 million isn't bad for a week's work.

    • I guess the scammers could have held on for a bit, but 2.1 million in about a week sounds pretty darn good to me.

  • A fool and his fake money are soon parted. - W. Shakespear

  • Suckers, enough said.

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