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Millions of dollars disappeared in minutes after watching its value plummet to nearly zero in a matter of hours after investors piled into a new cryptocurrency inspired by Netflix’s popular survival show “Squid Game.”

The cryptocurrency, called Squid, started trading at just one pence per token earlier last week. In the following days, drew attention a number is a mainstream media organization. Earlier on Monday, it was trading at $38 per token on a cryptocurrency exchange called Pancakeswap.

Then Squid went on a roller coaster ride. In a span of 10 minutes on Monday, the token’s value rose from $628.33 to $2,856.65. CoinMarketCap, a crypto data tracking site. Then, five dramatic minutes later, it traded at $0.0007.

More than 40,000 people still hold the coin after the crash. BscScan, a blockchain search engine and analytics platform. One of them was 30-year-old John Lee from Manila. He said he spent $1,000 on Squid tokens, thinking “somewhat instinctively” that the token was authorized by the Netflix program.

Mr. Lee said he was surprised to learn that he couldn’t sell the token right away. He can now sell tokens. But he said he’d be left with “almost nothing”.

Netflix spokesperson Sharon Chan declined to comment.

Reasons behind Squid’s collapse reported previously by Gizmodowas not clear. Nor were the identities of their creators. The website looked like it had been taken offline. An email to its developers bounced back. It turned out that social media channels were closed. The Twitter account was not accepting direct messages or replies.

Trading platform Pancakeswap did not respond to a request for comment.

Next, the cryptocurrency world ponders whether it’s what Molly Jane Zuckerman, Squid’s chief content officer for CoinMarketCap, calls “carpet pulling.” In a carpet pull, he said that supporters of a cryptocurrency are effectively leaving the market and taking their investors’ funds with them.

“I don’t see the developers going online and saying ‘wait with us, I’m so sorry, we’ll fix this,’ which happens when there is some sort of non-malicious problem,” he said.

Squid’s collapse highlights regulatory gaps over cryptocurrencies. government agencies and private companies Hurry to take control of the volatile but increasingly popular investment.

CoinMarketCap editor Yousra Anwar said that meme coin developers like Squid rarely promote themselves. If investors suspect financial misconduct, they can move from country to country or from regulator to regulator to investigate.

Ms Anwar said that Squid comes with some unusual features that might alarm investors. The developers required buyers to be one-two more than sellers to allow a sale.

The developers called the sell limit an “anti-dump” mechanism, according to a white paper that was once online, the document where the developers explain the features and technical basis of cryptocurrencies. Ms Anwar said such mechanisms are meant to prevent collapses, not to prevent owners from selling during the normal trading process.

According to the white paper, the developers also asked users to buy tokens of a second cryptocurrency called Marbles to sell their Squid token. Marbles could only be earned by participating in an online game inspired by the show. For example, to participate in the first game, players had to pay a high entry fee of 456 Squid coins. It costs thousands of coins to enter the next levels.

Ms. Zuckerman said these features have prevented many owners from selling as the value has plummeted.

It is difficult to quantify the amount of money invested and lost in tokens, he said. But BscScan has two labels crypto- addresses In relation to what Squid calls “carpet pulling”. Someone traded $3.38 million The BscScan page showed that Squid was converted to a popular crypto called BNB. Zuckerman said that to complete transactions, both addresses use Tornado Cash, a “coin mixer” or a software company that acts as an intermediary between the parties, making transactions difficult to trace.

“Anyone can create the name of any cryptocurrency,” he warned investors. “You can create a ‘Mad Men’ icon, a ‘Successor’ icon. That’s why it’s really important to do your own research.”