Squid Game based crypto collapses in $3m scam

[cyclone]

Squid Game based crypto collapses in $3m scam

Saleha Riaz
Tue, November 2, 2021, 5:34 PM

A crypto currency inspired by the hugely popular South Korean Netflix (NFLX) series Squid Game has turned out to be a scam, with its developers reportedly making off with around $3.4m (£2.5m).

The currency, called Squid, marketed itself as a "play-to-earn cryptocurrency", where people can earn more tokens in online games which can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or national currencies.

It was sold as a way to play an upcoming online game based on the series.

Squid launched in late October and saw its price surge in the last few days. It went from one cent to as high as around $2,800, before plunging to $0 on Monday. Its website disappeared, along with every other social media presence, and its Twitter account, which had gained 57,000 followers, was blocked due to “unusual activity”.


Squid went from one cent to as high as around $2,800, before plunging to $0 on Monday. Chart: CoinMarketCap

“Squid Game Dev does not want to continue running the project,” the developers wrote on their Telegram channel, saying they were “depressed” by scammers and “overwhelmed with stress.”

"The value of Squid Game meme coin becoming null in a matter of minutes is a classic portrayal of superficial value maximisation," Kunal Sawhney, CEO at equities research firm Kalkine Group told Yahoo Finance UK.

"Such movements are exceptionally bizarre as people are increasingly tilting towards these unregulated instruments without actually knowing the underlying value behind them," he said.

According to him, the crypto ecosystem has flourished with bitcoin getting recognition on a conventional bourse, but emerging cryptocurrencies and meme coins remain highly susceptible "to such bamboozles" which is why institutional investors only have exposure in a handful of crypto-assets.

More details in https://finance.yahoo.com/news/squid-gam...31986.html

[dydx]

In the marketplace, there are always cheaters around, and no one likes to get cheated and lose his hard-earned money. But ultimately it is the buyer's/investor's own choice whether to bet on something or not. Just don't fall for or be fooled by make-quick-money, novel or unproven investment opportunities. Don't just follow others without doing your own due diligence or at least think hard enough especially on the risks involved. Don't just believe in what others say unless it is backed by a good and long enough track record especially reputation and consistency. Do understand that invariably there is no easy gain in investment; if there is, it is more because of occasional luck, speculation, or not knowing the underlying risks. Usually the greater risk for new investors is that they don't know what they are doing - e.g. they think they are investing in cryptos, but likely they are merely speculating on something novel, unproven, and on their short-term price movements based on charts.

[¯|_(ツ)_/¯]

100% agree.
Just a reminder: Virtual currency is worth virtually nothing.

Gratitude.


https://www.straitstimes.com/life/arts/s...ding-cards

[CY09]

In the marketplace, there are always cheaters around, and no one likes to get cheated and lose his hard-earned money. But ultimately it is the buyer's/investor's own choice whether to bet on something or not. Just don't fall for or be fooled by make-quick-money, novel or unproven investment opportunities. Don't just follow others without doing your own due diligence or at least think hard enough especially on the risks involved. Don't just believe in what others say unless it is backed by a good and long enough track record especially reputation and consistency. Do understand that invariably there is no easy gain in investment; if there is, it is more because of occasional luck, speculation, or not knowing the underlying risks. Usually the greater risk for new investors is that they don't know what they are doing - e.g. they think they are investing in cryptos, but likely they are merely speculating on something novel, unproven, and on their short-term price movements based on charts.

Moving on short term price movements based on charts has been hugely profitable. Just look at our local banks trading profits, it is in the few hundred of millions. The key is ensuring you are not the loser! Not advocating trading, but it is a profession; i am not good it, so am still an investor

[dydx]

Moving on short term price movements based on charts has been hugely profitable. Just look at our local banks trading profits, it is in the few hundred of millions. The key is ensuring you are not the loser! Not advocating trading, but it is a profession; i am not good it, so am still an investor

Don't forget banks have huge capital, hire professional experienced traders, invest in high-tech dealing rooms and systems, apply multiple trading/hedging strategies across different products and financial markets, and have the benefit of customer orders to feed/back own-account trading. If banks trade naked cryptos like the layman on the streets, their performance on that will probably be about the same, as such trading is like pure gambling..

[Wildreamz]

Would love to see if their trading profits ROI beats the benchmark (e.g. S&P 500) consistently. If so, by how much.

[Corgitator]

Moving on short term price movements based on charts has been hugely profitable. Just look at our local banks trading profits, it is in the few hundred of millions. The key is ensuring you are not the loser! Not advocating trading, but it is a profession; i am not good it, so am still an investor

Don't forget banks have huge capital, hire professional experienced traders, invest in high-tech dealing rooms and systems, apply multiple trading/hedging strategies across different products and financial markets, and have the benefit of customer orders to feed/back own-account trading. If banks trade naked cryptos like the layman on the streets, their performance on that will probably be about the same, as such trading is like pure gambling..

And I think there's two misconceptions. Firstly, the misconception that banks are raking in crazy amounts of trading profits. That might have been the case many years ago, but proprietary trading desks (i.e. banks trading their balance sheet to generate trading profits) have largely gone away nowadays. Today, so-called trading desks at banks are mainly doing flow trading (executing trades on behalf of large clients, and generating some % fee for providing the service), or market making (providing bid ask quotes, and they generate profits through capturing the spread and getting exchange rebates). The sexy stories of prop desks making huge directional bets are long gone. Today, those bets are made by funds, not banks. If you look at DBS's 9M21 results, only $154m of the $3103m fee income comes from investment banking, and trading is still only a subset of investment banking, alongside ECM, DCM, M&A etc.

Secondly, even for the ones that are making these bets based on "short term price movements", they are using highly sophisticated quant models, and not the BS look-at-chart-and-see-cup-handle-pattern "technical analysis". A medium to high frequency example would be RenTech, while a high to very high frequency example would be Two Sigma. They hire the smartest PhDs in physics, engineering, mathematics, and these are not your old-fashioned traders that looked at charts hocus-pocus and make discretionary trades.

[dydx]

Do mathematicians and PhDs make better equity investors in picking good and safe enough stocks or businesses for a reasonably big bet for the longer term without losing sleep? Are they able to avoid big mistakes like betting in the wrong stocks or businesses which go belly up because of financial mismanagement or bad business decisions?

[Corgitator]

Do mathematicians and PhDs make better equity investors in picking good and safe enough stocks or businesses for a reasonably big bet for the longer term without losing sleep? Are they able to avoid big mistakes like betting in the wrong stocks or businesses which go belly up because of financial mismanagement or bad business decisions?

They don't make better investors, but what they are doing isn't investing. Just like common folks, they also make mistakes (model error or overfitting, overleverage etc, and LTCM comes to mind). But the very best of them are capable of generating very good returns. RenTech did 66% per annum over 30 years. What quants are doing is more about arbitraging short-term price discrepancies (sometimes longer-term if you are referring to factor investors), and hopefully without taking much directional risks.

And I am the usual traditional value investor that treats buying stocks as owning a proportionate interests in a business, so I am not in the quant camp. My point wasn't that quants are superior to other types of investors, but that the very best of their breed are not doing the "chart gazing" that any tom dick or harry can pick up, less there be retail investors that think they can copy what the professional quants do.

There are many different styles of investing/speculating that generate good returns. No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat. So I respect all the different styles (value, growth, macro, quant, narrative-driven valuations, accounting-driven valuation, distressed etc), and I don't judge which is superior. But in my view, the chart-reading types (or TA) cannot even catch mice.

[dydx]

Fellow ValueBuddies, I hope you can recognise Corgitator is a smart one among us...赞!