Squid currency, a cryptocurrency based on the popular Netflix series Squid Game, has vanished, along with the millions of dollars of investors’ money.

The disappearance of the squidgame.cash site has left investors fearing that they have been scammed.

The value of the currency had jumped dramatically from $0.01 to $4.39 last week. On Monday all coins that had been invested were removed by its creators.

Within 10 minutes of disappearing, the cryptocurrency was worth one-third of a cent, rendering it worthless.

Cryptocurrency website CoinMarketCap had warned that investors were reporting problems with selling their currency.

In an interview, Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad told the BBC that: “This cryptocurrency joins a long and growing list of digital coins and tokens that piggyback on random memes and cultural phenomena.

“Such coins rapidly catch investors’ fancy, leading to wildly inflated valuations. Naïve retail investors who get caught up in such speculative frenzies face the risk of substantial losses.”

Digital currency means that investments are not protected, and it is up to buyers and investors to be aware of scams.

Squid is a ‘play-to-earn’ cryptocurrency where tokens allow people to participate in online games to earn more tokens. Tokens can then be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies.

This concept means that the more people invest, the more they can win from the reward pool.

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Investors were blocked from selling their cryptocurrency by a simple piece of code.

Joe Stewart, a researcher at PhishLabs HelpSyst4ems, said in an interview with Threatpost: “All the rules of how a token can be bought and sold are contained in the smart contract code itself, since these tokens are traded on a decentralised ‘automatic market-maker’ contract.”

This means that the transfer function was prevented, disabling users from making trades unless the transaction came from the developer’s IP address.

This type of scam is known as a ‘rug pull’, which works by taking advantage of the liquidity pool generated between the Squid tokens and the commensurate tokens (BNB tokens) issued by Ninance, the cryptocurrency exchange.

Squid currency developers held the majority of the supply and were able to transfer the value of the coins into BNB tokens, cashing them out.

The Squid currency is not affiliated with the Netflix show. The Squid developers have not released any public comments on their actions.

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