After becoming a global hit on Netflix, South Korean survival drama ‘Squid Game‘ has spawned a cryptocurrency of the same name that has registered a massive surge over the past 24 hours. The South Korean survival drama has found a whole new base of popularity in the crypto world, with the Squid Game Token (SGT).

The SGT cryptocurrency (Squid) was launched just days earlier, and has exploded from a price of 1 cent to around USD4.39 by today, with the surge coming in the past 48-72 hours.

The white paper for the popular drama based cryptocurrency says that ‘The Squid Game project’ is a play-to-earn crypto platform, which is inspired by the Korean hit series.

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The token is available on BSC or Binance Smart Chain, Binance’s own platform where creators can feature new cryptocurrencies for trading. Binance has also dropped a cryptic tweet about it, fuelling rumours talks that the crypto platform may recognise it as a legitimate cryptocurrency, alongside the likes of XLM, SOL, and Cardano.

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The market cap has also skyrocketed, to USD5,532,077,657, with the peak token price going at USD7.7 per token. It is a play-to-earn token, which can be earned by playing six online games, which in turn allows players to earn more SGT tokens.

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Playing games requires players to start by first coming up with 456 tokens, which were as cheap as 1 cent per token earlier, but have become impossible for many. 

Entry fees for all the following levels only increases further, and in the sixth and final game, the entry fee is 15,000 SGT, which could be valued at around USD117,000.

‘Red flags’

Though the SGT seems like a steal deal but a quick look at the token’s website raises multiple red flags. The project’s website boasts of “partnership” with Netflix, Microsoft, CoinGecko, and several other well-known brand but CoinGecko told Cryptonews.com denied the same. Also in their whitepapers and website there are several grammatical mistakes such as “liquidity” having been spelled “liqudity”. Meanwhile, not being able to sell the token may also explain why the price has only moved in one direction – up! Judging from the project’s website, the SQUID token and the related game is likely a scam, with key team members listed as “CEO”, “CMO”, and “CTO” nowhere to be found online or on social media. Other red flags also include the fact that there is a Telegram channel that was set up that isn’t even open to comments from those on the outside. It was also found that even their Twitter account makes it impossible for regular people to actually reply to the post.