WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.359 You know, when you walk into a casino, there 00:00:02.359 --> 00:00:07.059 is this this unspoken fundamental agreement between 00:00:07.059 --> 00:00:09.060 you and the House. Right, the rules of engagement. 00:00:09.339 --> 00:00:11.660 Exactly. I mean, you know the odds are statistically 00:00:11.660 --> 00:00:14.060 against you. You know the House almost always 00:00:14.060 --> 00:00:16.820 wins over a long enough timeline. But you also 00:00:16.820 --> 00:00:19.199 know that at any given moment, you have the ultimate 00:00:19.199 --> 00:00:21.660 power to just stand up. Yeah, you can always 00:00:21.660 --> 00:00:23.940 leave. Right. You can take whatever chips you 00:00:23.940 --> 00:00:27.379 have left, walk over to the cashier's cage, cash 00:00:27.379 --> 00:00:29.179 out, and literally just walk out the front door. 00:00:29.640 --> 00:00:32.380 The rules are incredibly clear. You might lose 00:00:32.380 --> 00:00:35.539 your shirt. Sure. But you are never physically 00:00:35.539 --> 00:00:37.700 or financially imprisoned by the building itself. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:41.240 You have total agency. And that agency, I mean, 00:00:41.439 --> 00:00:44.079 that is the bedrock of any financial exchange, 00:00:44.100 --> 00:00:46.420 whether you're at a blackjack table in Vegas 00:00:46.420 --> 00:00:49.880 or trading blue chip stocks on Wall Street. You 00:00:49.880 --> 00:00:51.780 have the right to liquidate your position. Yeah. 00:00:52.060 --> 00:00:54.179 The moment you remove that ability to exit, you're 00:00:54.179 --> 00:00:56.579 no longer participating in a market or a game. 00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:59.219 You are basically participating in a hostage 00:00:59.219 --> 00:01:03.189 situation. Wow. a hostage situation. That is 00:01:03.189 --> 00:01:05.269 an intense way to put it, but it brings us right 00:01:05.269 --> 00:01:07.810 to the core of today's deep dive. So we are thrilled 00:01:07.810 --> 00:01:10.409 to have you joining us, addressing you, the listener, 00:01:10.469 --> 00:01:13.250 directly here as we unpack a single, utterly 00:01:13.250 --> 00:01:15.829 fascinating source today. We are looking at the 00:01:15.829 --> 00:01:19.469 Wikipedia article detailing the 2021 Squid Game 00:01:19.469 --> 00:01:22.150 cryptocurrency scam. Oh, this one is wild. It 00:01:22.150 --> 00:01:25.409 really is. Our mission today is to explore the 00:01:25.409 --> 00:01:28.489 anatomy of a massive digital illusion. We want 00:01:28.489 --> 00:01:31.430 to examine exactly how cultural hype, combined 00:01:31.430 --> 00:01:33.650 with the intoxicating promise of algorithmic 00:01:33.650 --> 00:01:36.769 wealth, completely blinded thousands of seemingly 00:01:36.769 --> 00:01:40.590 savvy investors to massive blinking red flags. 00:01:40.769 --> 00:01:42.290 Yeah, the red flags were everywhere. They really 00:01:42.290 --> 00:01:44.170 were. We're talking about a scenario where people 00:01:44.170 --> 00:01:46.689 voluntarily walked into a brightly lit, incredibly 00:01:46.689 --> 00:01:49.310 trendy digital casino, traded their life savings 00:01:49.310 --> 00:01:51.849 for special chips, and only realized after sitting 00:01:51.849 --> 00:01:54.030 at the table that the cashier's cage didn't actually 00:01:54.030 --> 00:01:56.769 exist. The exit doors had completely vanished. 00:01:57.230 --> 00:01:59.659 So, okay, let's unpack this. Right. the basic 00:01:59.659 --> 00:02:02.560 facts from the source. It's November 2021. And 00:02:02.560 --> 00:02:05.959 the timeline here is critical. November 2021, 00:02:06.239 --> 00:02:08.639 the cryptocurrency market is in the middle of 00:02:08.639 --> 00:02:12.699 this massive historic bull run. I mean, my digital 00:02:12.699 --> 00:02:15.919 backdrop here is just a cascading wall of rising 00:02:15.919 --> 00:02:18.560 and falling crypto charts. And back then, everything 00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:21.080 was just going up. Up and up. Exactly. We were 00:02:21.080 --> 00:02:24.460 seeing mean coins, minting millionaires literally 00:02:24.460 --> 00:02:28.400 overnight. Decentralized finance or DeFi. is 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:31.259 essentially the Wild West. It's operating largely 00:02:31.259 --> 00:02:33.439 outside of traditional regulatory frameworks. 00:02:33.819 --> 00:02:36.319 And right in the middle of this financial frenzy, 00:02:36.500 --> 00:02:39.759 a brand new cryptocurrency called Squidcoin appears 00:02:39.759 --> 00:02:42.120 out of nowhere. Right. Trading into the ticker 00:02:42.120 --> 00:02:45.620 Squid Game. Squid Game. And it is aggressively 00:02:45.620 --> 00:02:48.300 writing the coattails of the South Korean Netflix 00:02:48.300 --> 00:02:50.740 phenomenon Squid Game, which was arguably the 00:02:50.740 --> 00:02:52.659 most talked about piece of pop culture on the 00:02:52.659 --> 00:02:54.379 planet at that exact moment. Oh, absolutely. 00:02:54.500 --> 00:02:56.180 Everyone was talking about it. And the numbers 00:02:56.180 --> 00:02:58.159 for this coin are just staggering. I mean, we 00:02:58.159 --> 00:02:59.719 aren't talking about a token that had a modest 00:02:59.719 --> 00:03:02.560 little run. This coin surged thousands of percentage 00:03:02.560 --> 00:03:04.759 points in a matter of days. It was exponential. 00:03:05.120 --> 00:03:06.979 If you look at the historical charts from that 00:03:06.979 --> 00:03:10.360 first week of November 2021, the price action 00:03:10.360 --> 00:03:12.580 looks like a heart rate monitor that suddenly 00:03:12.580 --> 00:03:15.659 spikes into a sheer vertical line. It reached 00:03:15.659 --> 00:03:20.599 a peak valuation of $2 ,861 per single coin. 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:24.599 Which is insane. A climb to nearly $3 ,000 a 00:03:24.599 --> 00:03:28.419 coin for a brand new, completely unvetted project 00:03:28.419 --> 00:03:31.860 is astronomical, even by the highly volatile 00:03:31.860 --> 00:03:34.379 standards of the crypto space. Yeah, that's not 00:03:34.379 --> 00:03:37.539 normal. Not at all. And to understand why people 00:03:37.539 --> 00:03:39.560 were throwing money at this, we have to look 00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:41.719 at the specific mechanism the developers used 00:03:41.719 --> 00:03:44.219 to lure investors. They didn't just market this 00:03:44.219 --> 00:03:47.599 as a fan token. They marketed it as a play -to 00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:50.189 -earn cryptocurrency ecosystem. And the Play 00:03:50.189 --> 00:03:52.569 to Earn model, that was the ultimate bait in 00:03:52.569 --> 00:03:54.729 late 2021, wasn't it? Oh, it was the buzzword 00:03:54.729 --> 00:03:56.710 of the year. Because you had other projects out 00:03:56.710 --> 00:03:59.069 there actually paying people digital dividends 00:03:59.069 --> 00:04:01.030 just for interacting with a platform. So the 00:04:01.030 --> 00:04:03.789 concept wasn't entirely alien to the crypto community. 00:04:04.330 --> 00:04:06.590 The pitch for Squidcoin was that buying these 00:04:06.590 --> 00:04:09.430 tokens granted you access to an upcoming fan 00:04:09.430 --> 00:04:12.330 made online game. Inspired by the lethal games 00:04:12.330 --> 00:04:14.669 seen in the Netflix series. Exactly. The white 00:04:14.669 --> 00:04:17.449 paper outlined this multi -level tournament to 00:04:17.449 --> 00:04:19.850 play the first level, which was a digital version 00:04:19.850 --> 00:04:22.629 of red light green light, you had to pay an entry 00:04:22.629 --> 00:04:25.129 fee in squid. And if you'd advanced to higher 00:04:25.129 --> 00:04:27.449 levels, the entry fees increased exponentially. 00:04:27.769 --> 00:04:30.629 Right. And you might even have to purchase specific 00:04:30.629 --> 00:04:33.850 custom NFTs just to participate in those later 00:04:33.850 --> 00:04:36.250 rounds. It's just so clever. What's fascinating 00:04:36.250 --> 00:04:38.990 here is the psychological hook. It creates an 00:04:38.990 --> 00:04:42.120 artificial demand cycle. You buy the token not 00:04:42.120 --> 00:04:44.600 just to hold it as a speculative asset like a 00:04:44.600 --> 00:04:48.040 stock, but as an admission ticket to a game that 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:50.899 promises to generate even more tokens as rewards. 00:04:51.199 --> 00:04:54.139 It's a self -feeding loop. Exactly. The developers 00:04:54.139 --> 00:04:56.360 painted a picture of a self -saning digital economy. 00:04:56.560 --> 00:04:58.860 The theoretical promise was that you could play 00:04:58.860 --> 00:05:01.620 this game, accumulate massive rewards from the 00:05:01.620 --> 00:05:04.360 entry fees of all the players who lost, and then 00:05:04.360 --> 00:05:06.600 swap those winnings out for established cryptocurrencies 00:05:06.600 --> 00:05:09.699 like Ethereum, or just cash them out for US dollars. 00:05:09.959 --> 00:05:12.339 Man, it's just weaponizing cultural momentum. 00:05:12.540 --> 00:05:15.000 I mean, thinking about it, it's like buying extremely 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:17.540 expensive plastic chips at a casino where the 00:05:17.540 --> 00:05:19.480 gaming tables haven't even been built yet. That's 00:05:19.480 --> 00:05:21.720 a great way to put it. Right. But everyone is 00:05:21.720 --> 00:05:24.160 throwing money at the dealer simply because the 00:05:24.160 --> 00:05:27.120 casino has a really cool trendy movie theme. 00:05:27.879 --> 00:05:30.379 They were buying into a fantasy of participating 00:05:30.379 --> 00:05:32.779 in a high stakes winner -take -all tournament 00:05:32.779 --> 00:05:35.480 without any of the actual danger. Exactly. The 00:05:35.480 --> 00:05:38.139 Netflix series is entirely about desperate people 00:05:38.139 --> 00:05:40.819 competing in lethal children's games for a massive 00:05:40.819 --> 00:05:44.439 cash prize. The creators of this coin promised 00:05:44.439 --> 00:05:47.959 that exact same adrenaline rush, that same potential 00:05:47.959 --> 00:05:50.500 for life -changing wealth, but from the safety 00:05:50.500 --> 00:05:53.339 of a computer screen. You get to be the protagonist 00:05:53.339 --> 00:05:56.339 of the show, risking your wallet instead of your 00:05:56.339 --> 00:05:58.879 life. And that narrative overlap is a textbook 00:05:58.879 --> 00:06:01.680 psychological exploit. The project successfully 00:06:01.680 --> 00:06:04.300 mapped the emotional stakes of a fictional television 00:06:04.300 --> 00:06:06.819 show onto a real -world financial instrument. 00:06:07.339 --> 00:06:09.040 And because it was built on the Binance smart 00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:11.519 chain and traded on decentralized exchanges, 00:06:12.019 --> 00:06:15.779 there were zero gatekeepers. Anyone with a digital 00:06:15.779 --> 00:06:17.819 wallet and an internet connection could participate. 00:06:18.360 --> 00:06:21.279 There's no centralized authority vetting the 00:06:21.279 --> 00:06:23.899 code before it goes live. Which brings me to 00:06:23.899 --> 00:06:26.459 you, the listener, for a second. Think about 00:06:26.459 --> 00:06:29.759 this. Have you ever bought something entirely 00:06:29.759 --> 00:06:32.439 based on the fear of missing out? Oh, the FOMO 00:06:32.439 --> 00:06:35.439 is real. Right. Maybe a concert ticket for a 00:06:35.439 --> 00:06:37.420 band everyone is talking about, or a new piece 00:06:37.420 --> 00:06:40.000 of tech, only to realize later that you totally 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:42.420 skipped over the fine print. Because the fine 00:06:42.420 --> 00:06:45.500 print with Squidcoin was a literal financial 00:06:45.500 --> 00:06:48.110 trapdoor. A brutal one. And here's where it gets 00:06:48.110 --> 00:06:50.790 really interesting and honestly incredibly dark. 00:06:51.370 --> 00:06:53.829 The entire plot of the Netflix show Squid Game 00:06:53.829 --> 00:06:55.889 is about people trapped in a game they cannot 00:06:55.889 --> 00:06:58.170 escape. Yeah, that's the whole premise. Once 00:06:58.170 --> 00:07:00.170 you cross the starting line, you are locked in 00:07:00.170 --> 00:07:03.180 until the bitter end. And yet thousands of investors 00:07:03.180 --> 00:07:06.100 willingly poured real money into a cryptocurrency 00:07:06.100 --> 00:07:09.480 where the central fatal flaw in its smart contract 00:07:09.480 --> 00:07:12.379 was the absolute inability of the buyers to sell 00:07:12.379 --> 00:07:14.819 their tokens. They were trapped. They engineered 00:07:14.819 --> 00:07:18.019 a smart contract with what's called an anti -dump 00:07:18.019 --> 00:07:20.339 mechanism. OK, explain that because that sounds 00:07:20.339 --> 00:07:23.560 like a feature, not a bug. Well, it can be. In 00:07:23.560 --> 00:07:26.220 the decentralized finance world, an anti -dump 00:07:26.220 --> 00:07:28.540 mechanism is occasionally used by legitimate 00:07:28.540 --> 00:07:32.540 projects. The idea is to prevent early investors 00:07:32.540 --> 00:07:35.399 or whales from selling massive bags of tokens 00:07:35.399 --> 00:07:37.819 all at once and completely crashing the price 00:07:37.819 --> 00:07:40.100 for the wider community. So it's pitched as a 00:07:40.100 --> 00:07:42.860 stabilizing feature. Exactly. But the developers 00:07:42.860 --> 00:07:45.600 of Squee completely weaponized this concept. 00:07:45.839 --> 00:07:48.439 They wrote the code so that purchase the coin 00:07:48.439 --> 00:07:50.819 was totally seamless, but selling it required 00:07:50.819 --> 00:07:53.319 holding a secondary token that they called marbles. 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:56.199 Marbles, which is another direct reference to 00:07:56.199 --> 00:07:59.319 an episode of the show. Yeah. The audacity to 00:07:59.319 --> 00:08:01.620 name the locking mechanism after the most emotionally 00:08:01.620 --> 00:08:04.180 devastating episode of the series. But here's 00:08:04.180 --> 00:08:06.120 what baffles me when I look at the source material. 00:08:06.759 --> 00:08:09.160 The crypto community prides itself on the ethos 00:08:09.160 --> 00:08:12.519 of do your own research. DYO, yeah. It's practically 00:08:12.519 --> 00:08:15.000 their mantra. Right. So how is it possible that 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:18.220 investors dumped an estimated $3 .38 million 00:08:18.220 --> 00:08:22.040 into a digital asset without someone, anyone, 00:08:22.560 --> 00:08:24.560 running a test transaction to see if the cell 00:08:24.560 --> 00:08:27.199 function actually worked? Well, if we connect 00:08:27.199 --> 00:08:29.839 this to the bigger picture, it speaks directly 00:08:29.839 --> 00:08:32.480 to the arrogance of momentum trading and the 00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:35.100 blinding effect of exponential gains. Greed, 00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:38.950 basically. When a chart is printing massive green 00:08:38.950 --> 00:08:41.470 candles hour after hour, the fear of missing 00:08:41.470 --> 00:08:44.730 out entirely overrides analytical thinking. The 00:08:44.730 --> 00:08:46.730 line is going up so fast that if you stop to 00:08:46.730 --> 00:08:49.210 read the smart contract code, or if you pause 00:08:49.210 --> 00:08:51.570 to run a small test transaction, you might miss 00:08:51.570 --> 00:08:54.470 out on a 50 % gain in the next 10 minutes. Wow! 00:08:55.009 --> 00:08:57.149 The velocity of the price increase creates this 00:08:57.179 --> 00:08:59.820 reality distortion field. You aren't testing 00:08:59.820 --> 00:09:02.200 the plumbing of the exchange anymore. You're 00:09:02.200 --> 00:09:04.600 mentally shopping for a new house based on a 00:09:04.600 --> 00:09:06.919 fandom number on your screen. That is wild. And 00:09:06.919 --> 00:09:09.179 I was looking at the actual red flags, the Wikipedia 00:09:09.179 --> 00:09:12.360 page lists, and they are glaring. I mean, even 00:09:12.360 --> 00:09:13.919 if you don't know how to read a smart contract, 00:09:14.299 --> 00:09:16.600 the superficial warnings were everywhere. Oh, 00:09:16.639 --> 00:09:18.879 yeah, the website was a mess. Riddled with spelling 00:09:18.879 --> 00:09:21.840 and grammatical errors. And the developers Telegram 00:09:21.840 --> 00:09:25.039 channel didn't allow users to post replies. Their 00:09:25.039 --> 00:09:27.559 Twitter account had replies completely turned 00:09:27.559 --> 00:09:31.500 off. A literal mute button. Yes. In any traditional 00:09:31.500 --> 00:09:34.559 investment space, a company muting its own investors 00:09:34.559 --> 00:09:38.480 is a massive, immediate deal breaker. Why did 00:09:38.480 --> 00:09:41.299 a community that is usually so hypervigilant 00:09:41.299 --> 00:09:44.779 about scams just ignore a literal mute button? 00:09:45.059 --> 00:09:47.220 Because a significant portion of those buyers 00:09:47.220 --> 00:09:50.059 likely suspected it was a highly risky play or 00:09:50.059 --> 00:09:52.659 even a scam from the start. Wait, really? They 00:09:52.659 --> 00:09:54.460 knew? Well, they believed they could beat it. 00:09:54.519 --> 00:09:58.000 In the degen trading culture of 2021, there was 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:00.120 this pervasive belief that you could ride a hype 00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:03.039 wave and jump off just before it crashed. They 00:10:03.039 --> 00:10:05.299 saw the red flag, sure, but the cultural power 00:10:05.299 --> 00:10:07.120 of the squid game brand convinced them that there 00:10:07.120 --> 00:10:09.120 would always be a greater fool willing to buy 00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:11.200 their bags at a higher price. Ah, the greater 00:10:11.200 --> 00:10:14.240 fool theory. Exactly. What they failed to realize 00:10:14.240 --> 00:10:16.179 was that the developers had already removed the 00:10:16.179 --> 00:10:18.740 exit doors. You can't beat a rigged game if the 00:10:18.740 --> 00:10:20.659 sell button is permanently disabled for everyone 00:10:20.659 --> 00:10:23.309 except the house. The crazy thing about that 00:10:23.309 --> 00:10:27.950 astronomical $2 ,861 price tag isn't just the 00:10:27.950 --> 00:10:30.789 sheer number. It's the mechanical reality driving 00:10:30.789 --> 00:10:33.789 it up. If thousands of people are pouring money 00:10:33.789 --> 00:10:36.669 in and the code explicitly prevents anyone from 00:10:36.669 --> 00:10:39.370 taking money out, the supply of available tokens 00:10:39.370 --> 00:10:41.850 is effectively choked. Right. The supply side 00:10:41.850 --> 00:10:44.789 is zero. So the automated market maker algorithm 00:10:44.789 --> 00:10:47.590 has no choice but to artificially rocket the 00:10:47.590 --> 00:10:49.970 price to the moon. It's basic math at that point. 00:10:50.090 --> 00:10:52.990 Right. So what does this all mean? Which leads 00:10:52.990 --> 00:10:56.009 to the obvious question. If the regular investors 00:10:56.009 --> 00:10:58.870 couldn't hit sell, who had the master key to 00:10:58.870 --> 00:11:01.149 the vault? because the money didn't just sit 00:11:01.149 --> 00:11:03.990 there in digital purgatory. The climax of this 00:11:03.990 --> 00:11:07.450 entire saga is a spectacular vanishing act. The 00:11:07.450 --> 00:11:10.090 value of Squid HUD plummeted from nearly $3 ,000 00:11:10.090 --> 00:11:12.570 to absolute zero. In a matter of minutes. In 00:11:12.570 --> 00:11:15.049 minutes. Yeah. This is the execution of what 00:11:15.049 --> 00:11:17.990 is known to the space as a rug pull. To understand 00:11:17.990 --> 00:11:19.629 how this works mechanically, we have to look 00:11:19.629 --> 00:11:21.870 at how liquidity pools function on decentralized 00:11:21.870 --> 00:11:24.250 exchanges like PancakeSwap, which is where Squid 00:11:24.250 --> 00:11:26.450 was primarily traded. Okay, break that down for 00:11:26.450 --> 00:11:29.539 us. Sure. A liquidity pool is essentially a smart 00:11:29.539 --> 00:11:32.340 contract containing a pair of tokens. In this 00:11:32.340 --> 00:11:35.480 case, the worthless squid tokens and a highly 00:11:35.480 --> 00:11:38.580 valuable established cryptocurrency like Binance 00:11:38.580 --> 00:11:42.360 Coin or BNB. So as investors are buying into 00:11:42.360 --> 00:11:45.340 the hype, they are sending their valuable BNB 00:11:45.340 --> 00:11:48.379 into this digital pool. And in exchange, the 00:11:48.379 --> 00:11:50.940 automated system is handing them the squid tokens. 00:11:51.139 --> 00:11:53.659 Precisely. The pool is steadily filling up with 00:11:53.659 --> 00:11:55.919 millions of dollars worth of real liquid value, 00:11:56.419 --> 00:11:58.679 while the investors' wallets are filling up with 00:11:58.679 --> 00:12:00.460 tokens that they are mathematically prohibited 00:12:00.460 --> 00:12:03.820 from selling back into the pool. Now, in a decentralized 00:12:03.820 --> 00:12:06.580 exchange, There's no corporate oversight. There's 00:12:06.580 --> 00:12:08.860 no customer service department. The developers 00:12:08.860 --> 00:12:11.620 who created the liquidity pool hold the administrative 00:12:11.620 --> 00:12:14.919 keys to that specific smart contract. While they 00:12:14.919 --> 00:12:17.159 locked the investors out of the cell function, 00:12:17.440 --> 00:12:19.500 they retained their own administrative privileges. 00:12:19.980 --> 00:12:21.639 Oh, man. So to use an analogy, it's like setting 00:12:21.639 --> 00:12:23.820 up a currency exchange booth at an international 00:12:23.820 --> 00:12:26.340 airport. OK, I like this. The scammers are running 00:12:26.340 --> 00:12:29.720 the booth. Travelers walk up, hand over millions 00:12:29.720 --> 00:12:33.179 of actual US dollars, and the scammers hand back 00:12:33.179 --> 00:12:36.279 custom printed monopoly money, telling them it's 00:12:36.279 --> 00:12:38.159 going to be the global currency of the future. 00:12:38.419 --> 00:12:40.620 Right. The travelers take the monopoly money, 00:12:40.659 --> 00:12:42.759 but when they try to trade it back, the tellers 00:12:42.759 --> 00:12:45.279 refuse the transaction based on some obscure 00:12:45.279 --> 00:12:49.620 fine print. And then the rug pull happens. The 00:12:49.620 --> 00:12:52.740 developers use their administrative keys to invoke 00:12:52.740 --> 00:12:55.200 a function that withdraws all the underlying 00:12:55.200 --> 00:12:57.480 BNB liquidity from the trading pair. They just 00:12:57.480 --> 00:12:59.679 take it all. They take all the US dollars out 00:12:59.679 --> 00:13:01.700 of the cash register at that exchange booth, 00:13:02.299 --> 00:13:05.019 pack it into their suitcases, and leave the monopoly 00:13:05.019 --> 00:13:08.399 money sitting on the counter. Because the underlying 00:13:08.399 --> 00:13:10.919 value backing the SquidBeat token was instantly 00:13:10.919 --> 00:13:13.320 removed from the automated market maker, the 00:13:13.320 --> 00:13:15.799 algorithm immediately repriced the Squid token 00:13:15.799 --> 00:13:18.639 to its true value. Which is zero. Absolute zero. 00:13:18.879 --> 00:13:21.679 The vault wasn't just emptied. The fundamental 00:13:21.679 --> 00:13:24.620 mechanism that gave the token any perceived financial 00:13:24.620 --> 00:13:26.200 weight was ripped out from underneath it. And 00:13:26.200 --> 00:13:28.179 the speed of the collapse is just terrifying. 00:13:28.179 --> 00:13:30.759 It was instantaneous. People were watching their 00:13:30.759 --> 00:13:33.659 portfolios display millions of dollars in unrealized 00:13:33.659 --> 00:13:36.120 gains. And by the time they refreshed the web 00:13:36.120 --> 00:13:39.419 page, the balance was literally nothing. And 00:13:39.419 --> 00:13:41.399 that was followed immediately by the digital 00:13:41.399 --> 00:13:43.940 ghosting. Right. They just vanished. The source 00:13:43.940 --> 00:13:46.980 outlines the final chilling steps of the operation. 00:13:47.700 --> 00:13:50.690 The project's website went dark instantly. The 00:13:50.690 --> 00:13:53.370 Twitter account was deleted. The Telegram channel 00:13:53.370 --> 00:13:56.590 was erased. Any medium articles or promotional 00:13:56.590 --> 00:13:59.149 materials published by the developers were completely 00:13:59.149 --> 00:14:01.450 scrubbed from the internet. No trace left behind. 00:14:01.710 --> 00:14:04.309 None. There was no customer service line to call 00:14:04.309 --> 00:14:07.049 and absolute zero accountability. They packed 00:14:07.049 --> 00:14:09.590 up the liquidity pool and vanished into the blockchain. 00:14:09.879 --> 00:14:12.320 This raises an important question regarding the 00:14:12.320 --> 00:14:15.559 inherent risks of these unregulated digital frontiers. 00:14:15.759 --> 00:14:18.259 Yeah, the chaos of this unregulated space is 00:14:18.259 --> 00:14:20.840 perfectly reflected in the aftermath, specifically 00:14:20.840 --> 00:14:22.820 when you look at the attempts to track the stolen 00:14:22.820 --> 00:14:25.379 funds. Good luck with that. I noticed in the 00:14:25.379 --> 00:14:27.360 references section of the Wikipedia article, 00:14:28.139 --> 00:14:30.539 major media outlets couldn't even agree on exactly 00:14:30.539 --> 00:14:33.299 how much the scammers walked away with. They'd 00:14:33.299 --> 00:14:35.399 have Forbes reporting that the founders ran away 00:14:35.399 --> 00:14:39.759 with $2 .5 million. A CNET headline cites $2 00:14:39.759 --> 00:14:42.299 million. Yeah, the numbers were all over the 00:14:42.299 --> 00:14:44.669 place initially. Ultimately, the main text of 00:14:44.669 --> 00:14:47.210 the Wikitedia article settles on an estimated 00:14:47.210 --> 00:14:51.070 $3 .38 million based on a broader post -mortem 00:14:51.070 --> 00:14:53.789 analysis of the blockchain. And that variance 00:14:53.789 --> 00:14:56.330 in the reporting. Between $2 million and nearly 00:14:56.330 --> 00:14:59.649 $3 .5 million, it really highlights the sheer 00:14:59.649 --> 00:15:03.230 labyrinthine complexity of tracking illicit funds 00:15:03.230 --> 00:15:05.929 in decentralized finance. And it's synonymous, 00:15:06.029 --> 00:15:08.289 right? Well, pseudonymous. The blockchain is 00:15:08.289 --> 00:15:10.570 a public ledger, meaning you can see the transactions 00:15:10.570 --> 00:15:12.899 moving from wallet to wallet. But those wallets 00:15:12.899 --> 00:15:15.100 don't have names attached to them. The scammers 00:15:15.100 --> 00:15:16.879 don't transfer the funds to a bank account with 00:15:16.879 --> 00:15:19.240 their name on it. Right. They route the stolen 00:15:19.240 --> 00:15:22.299 cryptocurrency through a complex web of secondary 00:15:22.299 --> 00:15:24.840 wallets, coin mixers and cross -chain bridges. 00:15:25.519 --> 00:15:27.399 These are all tools designed specifically to 00:15:27.399 --> 00:15:30.279 obfuscate the origin and destination of the assets. 00:15:30.539 --> 00:15:32.879 It's basically a bank robbery where the police 00:15:32.879 --> 00:15:35.360 have the security footage showing the exact moment 00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:37.879 the money left the vault, but the getaway car 00:15:37.879 --> 00:15:40.019 immediately splits into a thousand different 00:15:40.019 --> 00:15:42.620 vehicles driving in completely different directions, 00:15:43.179 --> 00:15:46.080 all with heavily tinted windows. That is exactly 00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:48.440 what it is. And the robbers never had to step 00:15:48.440 --> 00:15:51.059 foot in a physical jurisdiction. They exploited 00:15:51.059 --> 00:15:53.679 a borderless, permissionless financial protocol. 00:15:53.870 --> 00:15:57.129 When you operate entirely outside of traditional 00:15:57.129 --> 00:16:00.029 financial systems, you are also entirely outside 00:16:00.029 --> 00:16:02.029 of their protections. Your safety net. None. 00:16:02.549 --> 00:16:05.350 There is no FDIC insurance to cover your losses. 00:16:05.809 --> 00:16:08.129 There is no central bank you can call to reverse 00:16:08.129 --> 00:16:11.049 a fraudulent transaction. The code is the law. 00:16:11.429 --> 00:16:13.990 And in this case, the code was maliciously designed 00:16:13.990 --> 00:16:16.840 to trap the user. So to synthesize this deep 00:16:16.840 --> 00:16:19.720 dive for you, the squeeze saga was not a technological 00:16:19.720 --> 00:16:22.399 failure. Not at all. It wasn't a bug in the system 00:16:22.399 --> 00:16:24.820 or a project that simply ran out of funding. 00:16:25.159 --> 00:16:28.259 It was a perfectly executed, highly premeditated 00:16:28.259 --> 00:16:31.139 psychological exploit. The developers took a 00:16:31.139 --> 00:16:33.580 beloved, massive cultural touchstone, a show 00:16:33.580 --> 00:16:35.679 that had gripped the global consciousness, and 00:16:35.679 --> 00:16:38.159 they weaponized its narrative. They knew exactly 00:16:38.159 --> 00:16:40.529 what they were doing. They combined that cultural 00:16:40.529 --> 00:16:43.110 relevance with the highly dangerous speculative 00:16:43.110 --> 00:16:46.710 frenzy of the 2021 crypto bull run. They built 00:16:46.710 --> 00:16:49.330 an anti -dump mechanism disguised as a feature, 00:16:49.809 --> 00:16:52.370 locked the doors from the outside, and executed 00:16:52.370 --> 00:16:55.330 a multimillion dollar disappearing act in broad 00:16:55.330 --> 00:16:57.269 daylight right in front of everyone watching 00:16:57.269 --> 00:16:59.649 the charts. And, you know, it leaves us with 00:16:59.649 --> 00:17:01.909 a rather haunting thought to mull over. Yeah. 00:17:02.470 --> 00:17:05.930 The architecture of this scam. perfectly mirrored 00:17:05.930 --> 00:17:09.210 the dystopian, inescapable trap of the television 00:17:09.210 --> 00:17:11.470 show it was named after. It really did. It is 00:17:11.470 --> 00:17:14.750 a stunning piece of dark poetry. The creators 00:17:14.750 --> 00:17:17.309 of Squide literally built a financial system 00:17:17.309 --> 00:17:20.170 based on a fictional scenario where desperate, 00:17:20.490 --> 00:17:22.710 greedy participants are ruthlessly eliminated 00:17:22.710 --> 00:17:26.289 for the profit of an unseen VIP class. They broadcasted 00:17:26.289 --> 00:17:28.470 their intentions right in the title. They named 00:17:28.470 --> 00:17:31.130 their token after a lethal trap and people still 00:17:31.130 --> 00:17:33.970 lined up to buy it. Which forces a very uncomfortable 00:17:33.970 --> 00:17:36.549 reflection on human nature, honestly, and the 00:17:36.549 --> 00:17:39.809 allure of exponential wealth. If a digital illusion 00:17:39.809 --> 00:17:42.369 can be this overtly transparent about its dark 00:17:42.369 --> 00:17:45.309 narrative, utilizing mechanics that explicitly 00:17:45.309 --> 00:17:48.410 prevent you from leaving and still succeed to 00:17:48.410 --> 00:17:50.490 the tune of over three million dollars. Yeah. 00:17:50.829 --> 00:17:53.490 Are we destined to keep willingly walking into 00:17:53.490 --> 00:17:55.789 these traps just because the flashing lights 00:17:55.789 --> 00:17:58.809 of the jackpot look bright enough? Oh, wow. That 00:17:58.809 --> 00:18:01.430 is a phenomenal question. It strips away all 00:18:01.430 --> 00:18:03.950 the complex technical jargon of liquidity pools 00:18:03.950 --> 00:18:06.690 and smart contracts and gets right down to the 00:18:06.690 --> 00:18:09.089 raw psychology of greed. Yeah, exactly. It forces 00:18:09.089 --> 00:18:12.170 us to ask what glaring obvious red flags we are 00:18:12.170 --> 00:18:14.190 willing to completely ignore the moment a chart 00:18:14.190 --> 00:18:16.640 starts glowing green. Well, thank you so much 00:18:16.640 --> 00:18:18.619 for joining us on this Deep Dive. We hope it 00:18:18.619 --> 00:18:20.880 gave you some fascinating insights into the mechanics 00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:23.819 of decentralized finance, the power of cultural 00:18:23.819 --> 00:18:26.500 hype, and the intricate anatomy of a digital 00:18:26.500 --> 00:18:29.240 rug pull. Thanks for listening. As always, stay 00:18:29.240 --> 00:18:31.619 curious, stay critical, and before you sit down 00:18:31.619 --> 00:18:34.059 at any new table and buy into the hype, always 00:18:34.059 --> 00:18:37.119 make sure you locate the exit doors before you 00:18:37.119 --> 00:18:38.900 hand over your chips. We'll catch you on the 00:18:38.900 --> 00:18:39.660 next Deep Dive.