INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Squid Game, or SQUID, the latest memecoin sensation, surged more than 230,000% in the past week.New Delhi: Investors drawn to
cryptocurrencies can be forgiven for having an expectation of high returns, especially lately
After all, even as the S-P 500 Index more than doubled in the past five years, Bitcoin rocketed more than 80-fold -- albeit with much of the
rally occurring in the past year
a market as untamed, sprawling and speculative as crypto
And the inflation in value is often ephemeral
For evidence, there's Squid Game, or SQUID, the latest memecoin sensation, inspired by the Netflix hit
It surged more than 230,000% in the past week to $2,861.80, according to CoinMarketCap pricing -- only to plunge 100% to less than half a
lender Nexo, in an email Sunday
don't care about the losses
Ether to other tokens, decentralized finance projects and more
Dogecoin, which started in 2013 as a joke, has soared 10,000% in the past year, according to CoinGecko pricing
Shiba Inu, which was created just last year, has soared more than 90,000,000%; it soared 800% in October alone.Squid Game's boom and bust
reveals another side of the crypto frenzy: The potential for demand to suddenly dry up, or worse, for developers to abandon a project and
abscond with the funds in a scam known as a rug pull
Whether that's what happened with Squid Game is still unclear, but even before the drop, there were inconsistencies around trading
similar names to high-fliers
founder Elon Musk's puppy) on CoinGecko comes up with Floki Inu, Floki Musk, Shiba Floki, Baby Moon Floki, FlokiSwap and FlokiMooni.Some
have suggested that there are broader societal reasons for the moves, which dovetail with the Reddit-fueled rides in stocks such as GameStop
and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc
driven by younger people who aren't looking for modest returns, but are instead willing to take huge risks in order to make huge amounts of
money.Others trace the speculative frenzy to the mountains of cash floating around the global financial system as the Federal Reserve and
other central banks keep monetary spigots open to counter the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic
who want to apply the technology to create utility -- whether it's in financial tools like with DeFi, or ownership rights like with NFTs,
somewhat intellectually insulting to see a meme coin like #SHIB have a higher market cap than other projects like #Algorand, #Avalanche
PwC's Arslanian said.Crypto has delivered some wild rides, and not just memecoins
This reality may be easy to forget with Bitcoin and Ether both trading near all-time highs
Bitcoin, for example, dropped more than 80% from high to low between December 2017 and December 2018
The verdict on this current craze has yet to be determined, but individuals who are piling in now risk learning a hard lesson somewhere down
Squid Game investors already did.
