Squid Game Token: the 5-Minute Rug
2026-09-10
Riding the Netflix hit, SQUID launched on BNB Smart Chain in late October 2021, pitched as play-to-earn entry for an online Squid Game. Within days it printed one of the steepest charts in crypto history — then deleted it in minutes.
Fact table
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Chain and venue | BNB Smart Chain, PancakeSwap |
| All-time high | Over 2,800 dollars, 1 November 2021 |
| Trough | Near zero within minutes the same day |
| Estimated drain | About 3.4 million dollars per contemporary reports |
Buyers piled in as the price ran from cents to thousands in under a week, amplified by viral coverage. On 1 November 2021 the developers dumped their holdings, drained the PancakeSwap liquidity, and vanished with the funds. The price fell more than 99.99 percent in minutes. Binance said it froze some related addresses and opened an investigation; the anonymous team was never publicly identified.
Cause of death: honeypot rug
The token contract blocked ordinary holders from selling while allowing deployer-controlled addresses to exit — a classic honeypot. A stated 5 percent sell mechanism plus anti-dump language gave the restriction a plausible story until the dump. Only buys registered, so each buy pushed the price higher on thin PancakeSwap liquidity, manufacturing the vertical chart. When developers removed liquidity and sold, there were no real bids underneath.
Red flags
Holders reported failed sell transactions days before the crash — the single biggest warning. Anonymous team with no verifiable identities. Whitepaper full of grammar errors and impossible roadmaps. Viral brand with no rights: Netflix confirmed no affiliation. No liquidity lock, no audit, comments disabled on social channels, and centralized holdings that could dump at will.
Lesson for next cycle
Before buying any hype token, try a tiny sell first and read the contract: sell taxes, transfer blacklists, and owner-only exemptions are visible to anyone who looks. Check holder concentration and liquidity locks on the DEX pair, and assume any viral brand coin without an official partnership is guilty until proven innocent.
More from the series: Crypto Graveyard hub, BitConnect and OneCoin, Terra LUNA, FTX and FTT, Celsius and CEL.
Sources: BBC on the SQUID collapse, Reuters on SQUID crash, CoinMarketCap SQUID history, CoinDesk on the rug pull.
Not financial advice. Sources checked: 10 September 2026.