‘Squid Game’ Cryptocurrency Soars 40,000% In A Week

The hit Netflix series “Squid Game” has inspired a new cryptocurrency, which saw its value skyrocket by 40,000% this week in just a handful of trading days.

As of 0745 ET Friday, the “Squid Game” token, aka “SQUID”, stood at $5.41, up from $0.01235 when it started trading on Tuesday, according to data from Coin Market Cap.

The relatively obscure crypto is up more than 200% in the past 24 hours and it now commands a market capitalization of more than $419 million.

While the rapid spike in price may tempt more traders into the coin, CoinMarketCap warned on its site that some people appear to not be able to sell the coin once they buy it.

“We have received multiple reports that the users are not able to sell this token in Pancakeswap. Please exercise caution while trading!” CoinMarketCap warns. Pancakeswap is a popular decentralized cryptocurrency exchange.

The inability to sell the coins could be tied to an “anti-dumping mechanism” that the creators of the coin described in a white paper associated with the cryptocurrency.

Like the South Korean show “Squid Game” in which 456 deeply indebted people compete in deadly children’s games for a grand prize of more than $38MM, the Squid token was launched as a way to buy into the Squid Game project, a crypto play-to-earn platform that will culminate with an online in a squid-game-esque tournament next month.

The online tournament will mimic the six rounds of games featured in the hit series, but, as the white paper says, “we do not provide deadly consequences.”

“Your experience will only reflect on the joy of winning rewards and sorrow of losing money when the game failed,” the white paper says.

Another difference is that the online tournament will not cap the reward money for winning nor will there be a maximum number of players.

Contestants will have to fork over a preset amount of the SQUID token in order to compete in each round of the tournament. At the crypto’s current price, the fee for the final round of the tournament, for example, stands at roughly $81,000.

Entry fees from each of the rounds are split between developers, who said they’ll take 10%, and the reward pool, where the remaining 90% of the coins will be deposited.

t the crypto’s current price, the fee for the final round of the tournament, for example, stands at roughly $81,000.

And throughout the tournament, players will have the opportunity to earn non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, by winning rounds. The NFTs also appear to be for sale on the behind the token’s website, and they can be traded among contestants.

Throughout the game, users will also earn Marbles Tokens, which is another reference to the show. Those tokens will allow users to eventually sell their SQUID coins and cash in, according to the white paper.

Of course, while the international crypto community has embraced the game, the NYC school system sees the trend as a liability, and ha banned all students from dressing up s characters from the show for halloweem