(THECOUNT) — The price of a viral cryptocurrency inspired by the hit Netflix show Squid Game crashed Monday morning after reports detailing the project’s anonymous founders had pulled the plug on the token and run away with investor proceeds—the latest cautionary tale for traders trying to chase the nascent crypto market’s meteoric gains, according to Forbes.
Amid a days-long retail trading frenzy, the Squid Game-inspired token skyrocketed as much as 310,000%.
The price of the so-called Squid Game token lost virtually all of its value at about 6 a.m. EDT, plummeting from a price of more than $2,861 to less than half a penny and wiping out $2 billion in market value within 15 minutes, according to cryptocurrency data website CoinMarketCap.
The crash started after users noticed wallet activity suggesting the token’s alleged developers had terminated the project before its heavily publicized online game had even launched and cashed out of approximately $2.5 million worth of binance coin tokens, hiding transaction details using a protocol called Tornado Cash.
Squid token’s website and social media accounts appeared offline after the crash Monday morning; Twitter had already restricted its account due to “some unusual activity.”
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