Hello and welcome. You are listening to Patrick Boyle on Finance, a podcast exploring ideas from quantitative finance, examining events occurring in markets right now and financial history to see what lessons can be taken away, including interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world of finance. To learn more about the podcast, visit onfinance.org.

Welcome back, everyone. So last week, I'm sure many of you saw the news that there was a new

cryptocurrency, because that's what the world desperately needs, based on the hit Korean Netflix show Squid Game.

It made all of the big news outlets, BBC, Yahoo, Business Insider, Fortune and CNBC.

The Squid Game cryptocurrency soared by 83,000% in a few days, which is considered good, especially because it was not dog-themed

or tweeted about by Elon Musk. CNBC reported that the Squid token was launched as the

exclusive coin of the Squid Game Project, a crypto play-to-earned platform. The online tournament, which launches

in November, which is now, mimics the six rounds of games featured in its namesake TV show.

But unlike its Netflix counterpart, the creator said, we do not provide deadly consequences, which is a bit boring,

but okay.

Additionally, they went on to say, unlike the Netflix series, which capped the grand

prize at 38.5 million, the virtual simulation of Squid Game would not limit the maximum

price or the number of participants.

Once again, how can this go wrong?

So that's great, a token that relates to a game that has yet to be launched,

that's based on a popular streaming show which it's unaffiliated with.

Of course it went up 83,000% in a few days. It's a bit like in the late

90s where the worst dot-com companies to own were the ones that were profitable, as when

a company had profits you could value it using traditional metrics. Obviously the best game-based

cryptocurrency would be the one where no game yet exists, as the game might not be good.

Of course, a crypto-based video game that's being rushed out in a few weeks is definitely going to be amazing.

I can't imagine it takes more time than that to design and code up a video game, right?

...