According to its whitepaper, SQUID cryptocurrency started its presale on October 20 and immediately "sold out in 1 second" and was launched as an exclusive token for the "Squid Game Project," an online crypto play-to-earn tournament launching this November.
SQUID was at $0.012 on Oct. 26, and is currently above $4.89 on CoinMarketCap at the time of writing, up more than 270% in 24 hours.
In the meantime, CoinMarketCap warned of numerous reports that users aren’t able to sell the token on the decentralized exchange Pancakeswap. While there was not a clear reason for this, the white paper noted that the coin has anti-dumping technology, which makes it impossible to sell unless some conditions are met.
Similar to the hit TV series, in the online game, competitors take part in six contests, with players eliminated in each round. A fee is required to enter each game, starting at SQUID 456 for the first round and increasing as the tournament progresses. The majority of the fees are pooled together to make up the winner’s reward, while 10% of the funds go to the development team.
While the blockchain game won’t feature “deadly consequences” like the TV show but players will have to put together a preset price in squid tokens to play every game.
Some will make it so users have to buy custom-made non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from the website, some of which feature characters from the show. This does not come cheap as the final game will cost $33,450, plus the cost of an NFT.