Cast your mind back a few years to last week – when there was much laughing and wailing at the collapse of Squid coin, a meme cryptocurrency launched to capitalise on the popular Netflix show. It had gone to market, had rocketed 23 million per cent in value to $28,000-odd a unit… and then plummeted to zero on Monday morning after the creators cashed out for real-world money. Yet like the battle-hardened protagonist of the show, amazingly, the currency is down but not out. Yesterday it was reported to have been the top gainer in the global crypto market, having rocketed more than 800 per cent in 24 hours to… $0.65.
Not much consolation, I suppose, to those who bought the peak, but hope obviously springs eternal. And the story of Squid coin – not least that forlorn determination to ‘buy the dip’ – seems to stand for so much about the troubling world of blockchain hype: we’re looking at a religious as much as an economic phenomenon.
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