A "Squid Games" Crypto? 👀
How crypto has disrupted the way we perceive value
Many of you have either probably watched or heard of the new Netflix hit Squid Games. For those of you that haven’t, I highly recommend checking it out, but as a heads up it does get pretty violent at times.
The back story
For context, the Korean thriller series is focused around an elite group of individuals who recruit 456 people that have a vast amount of financial debt to “play a few games” and if they win, they’ll receive a grand prize of $46.5B won (~$38 million USD). The games they play are all similar to childhood games that many of them played growing up in South Korea. However, unlike when they’d play the games as kids, in these games, when they lose they die. If they win, they’ll receive the grand prize and be able to pay off all their debt.
The show has been crushing headlines and spreading like wildfire across social media. Below are just a few key numbers since it’s debut on September 17th:
Has generated $900M+ in value for Netflix (this one’s important, don’t forget it!)
Ranked #1 on Netflix in 94 countries
The hashtag (#squidgames) has been used on TikTok more than 37.2 billion times
In it’s first 28 days on Netflix it reached 111 million fans
The fascinating thing about the Squid Games story is that the producer originally wrote the script in 2009 and was turned down by many Korean production groups causing him to put the script on the shelves and pursue other films.
However, 10+years later, after Netflix had focused on expanding into other regions including Asia, the producer re-pitched his script for Squid Games to some Netflix folks - and they loved it. In 2019, they agreed to start producing the film and put the gears in motion for the show to debut in 2021.
Creating value in the world has never been easier
While I was a big fan of the show, I’m writing this article to bring attention to how much cryptocurrencies have disrupted the way that we perceive value. It took more than 10 years and Netflix expanding to Asia for the Squid Games show to generate $900M+ USD of value.
On October 26, a new crypto called “Squid Games” was launched via a binance smart chain (binance is just an exchange where lots of different cryptos can be easily exchanged). The squid token was created with the following economics:
initial total supply of 800 million “squids”
initial price of $.01229 per squid (aka per token)
The description of the Squid Games token on coinmarketcap, a website that lists all cryptocurrencies and their current value, is as follows:
”The Squid Game project is a crypto play-to-earn platform on BSC chain inspired by the Korean hit series on Netflix about a deadly tournament of children’s games. SQUID is the only token can be used in Squid Game. You will need SQUID to participate into a game or get restart after you fail the game.”
The price as of 10/30 per squid was $15.38. Yes, you just read that right. In 4 days the coin has gone up almost 125,000% from $.01229 to $15.38.
So what does this mean?
In roughly 4 days more than $12 billion of value (the fully diluted market cap of the coin) was created essentially out of thin air.
The coin is supposedly not affiliated with Netflix and no one is really sure if the online version of Squid Games this new crypto is based on is real or not. My personal guess is that the price will be pumped for a while then eventually come all the way back down, and either be labeled a scam or lose 99% of it’s value. As of 10/30 there have been reports that people who have bought squid tokens have not been able to sell them back on exchanges - forcing the price to continue to skyrocket.
In summary, it took more than 10 years for the actual Squid Games show to create $900M USD of value and only took 4 days for the new Squid Games crypto to reach $12B USD of value.
This is the perfect example of how crypto and the digital world is disrupting how we perceive the value of physical and tangible things like a tv show. Before crypto there wouldn’t have been a way for a coin or currency to be made around the brand of a popular show such as Squid Games. No government or group of people would have created a “Squid Dollar” but thanks too crypto, we now have squid tokens and it seems that people are willing to pay a pretty penny for them!
I hope you all enjoyed this article - if there’s a specific topic you’d like to see me write about or if you have any feedback, please always feel free to reach out.
Have a great week!
Cheers,
Carnes
As of 11/1 at 5 am - the Squid Games crypto has officially been labeled a scam. The creators of the coin "pulled the rug" on the crypto, meaning that they exchanged all the coins for actual USD. They never let anyone sell the coins only buy them, driving up the price, and now just like that, the $12B of value that the coin created is now gone - almost like it was never even there..
That's wild