The crypto world spent 2021 under the influence of meme coins. Dogecoin opened the door for this new group of altcoins, Shiba Inu capitalized on this wave of hype, Squid Game token reminded us how dangerous this route can actually be and now the crypto community SpongeBob Square’s (SPONGS) De thinks he’s trying to recreate his Squid Game nightmare. The token, traded on the SPONGS ticker, has garnered attention by increasing over 5000 percent over the past few days, but a glance at its tokenomics and team suggests that the platform bears similarities to Squid Game and a few other dubious Binance Smart Chain projects.
While its impressive rally continued for several days, SPONGS reached a daily gain of 131 percent today. The meme coin, which declined at the time of writing, is trading at $0.000000001196, up about 60 percent at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap data.
SPONGS has been breaking record after record with massive gains over the past few days. Yesterday, on January 11, the meme coin topped the list of coins with the highest intraday gains, climbing over 5000 percent. Again, the same meme coin hit an all-time high from $0.000000000043 to $0.0000000001707 just in the past week.
However, the meteoric rise, however impressive, doesn’t tell the whole story. Built on Binance Smart Chain, the token is inspired by SpongeBob SquarePants, an American animated television series that has aired since 1999. SpongeBob, the lead character of the show, which is the fifth longest series in American television history, is known as one of the most beloved characters on television and is also the symbol of the meme coin.
It goes without saying that SpongeBob Square Token has nothing to do with the actual Nickelodeon TV show, as it does with Squid Game. Even possibly unauthorized use of the show’s name is likely illegal, but such moves have recently become the norm in the cryptocurrency world.
Since blockchain networks like BSC are very easy to use even for entry-level developers, creating new tokens has become quite easy and accessible. And unlike in the past when exchanges like Binance and Coinbase were gateway controllers, decentralized exchanges like PancakeSwap and Uniswap allow almost any user to list their tokens.
Incidents such as these types of projects starting from scratch and ending in disappointment have happened several times in the crypto market before. Nor is it new that scammers continue to use popular culture to gain media attention.
Just earlier this year, another instance of rugpull scam occurred with Mando, a cryptocurrency that used footage from Disney+’s The Mandalorian TV show without Disney’s permission. But the most notorious of them lately was Squid Game, a token again built on BSC and named after a popular Netflix TV series. Squid Game attracted a lot of attention due to the popularity of the series, and its price rose within days, breaking a record of over $ 2,800.
However, the coin collapsed faster than it rose. A rug pull* Less than an hour after the alleged scam was committed, its price dropped from $2,800 to almost zero. Binance and other organizations went to great lengths to find the perpetrators, but in the world of decentralized finance this was a near impossible feat.
SpongeBob Square (SPONGS) team promises to be a token that “can be accepted as a means of payment and meme token by the general public,” and claims the following about the platform in a statement on its website:
“SPONGS will save all humanity from the effects of inflation. By combining the power of memes with reality, SPONGS gives people power and opportunity instead of venture capitalists and hedge funds.”
*Rug pull means the people behind the project, usually the team of developers, use a backdoor that allows them to eliminate liquidity in the code and make a profit
Disclaimer: What is written here is not investment advice. Cryptocurrency investments are high-risk investments. Every investment decision is under the individual’s own responsibility. Finally, Koinfinans and the author of this content cannot be held responsible for personal investment decisions.