Hartford was an experienced crypto trader, having been involved in the world since 2017...
“I wanted to get in as soon as possible,” he says. He bought $300 worth of Squid Game coin when each was worth around 90 cents, sat back, and watched...
When Hartford woke up the next morning, the Squid Game coin had hit $5. His $300 had ballooned into more than $1,660. He was overjoyed.
But something weird was happening. On the morning of October 29, when he searched the $SQUID hashtag on Twitter, he saw people tweeting that they couldn’t sell their holdings. Others corrected those struggling to cash out, explaining they needed to buy marbles, which were obtained through a pay-to-play game organized by the project’s owners, in order to sell...
Hartford decided to buy $50 in marbles on October 31 as an experiment to see if there was a way to get his money out. Hartford’s initial $300 investment was worth $200,000 as the Squid Game coin rose to $600 per token. It'd eventually rise to a peak of $2,861, which would make Hartford just short of $1 million. In theory. In reality, the whole thing was a scam...