SQUID token’s website and social accounts disappeared after token’s value had spiked more than 310,000% and reached a peak of $2,856 late Sunday before crashing straight to zero, according to CoinMarketCap.
Additionally, investors were having trouble selling their tokens, and the cryptocurrency's white paper describing SQUID was hampered with grammatical errors.
A number of repeated warnings across social media and the crypto community also appeared to warn investors away from the latest meme coin sensation due to the risk involved.
“Remarkably, many such coins rapidly catch investors’ fancy, leading to wildly inflated valuations,” Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad told the BBC. “Naïve retail investors who get caught up in such speculative frenzies face the risk of substantial losses.”
Investors continued to pile money into the project and risk their capital in the speculative game, despite the warnings. Right before its collapse, Twitter flagged the cryptocurrency’s account and temporarily restricted it due to “suspicious activity.”
The scam, which was reported by Gizmodo, is called a “rug pull.” It is a malicious maneuver in which a crypto’s creators abandon the project and cash out of their coins in exchange for real money, quickly devaluing the crypto’s value.
Based on wallet activity, it’s alleged that the creator of the game effectively walked away with approximately $2.5 million of untraceable binance coin (BNB) from investors.
The game’s website, Twitter account and other social media platforms have since been deleted.