Avi His

Storia Crypto Peculiare #4: BitConnect – Il Ponzi più Rumoroso e la Crisi del Supporto Reale (Il Punto di Vista di Avi)
Alla fine del 2016, una piattaforma chiamata BitConnect è esplosa sulla scena delle criptovalute con promesse che suonavano troppo belle per essere vere — e lo erano. 'Orchestrata' da Satish Kumbhani, BitConnect offriva agli investitori l'opportunità di prestare Bitcoin e guadagnare fino all'1% al giorno in ritorni attraverso il suo token nativo, BitConnect Coin (BCC).
Il marketing era incessante e teatrale. I promotori, il più famoso dei quali è Carlos Matos, viaggiavano per il mondo ospitando eventi sontuosi e facendo discorsi pieni di hype. La frase iconica di Matos — “Bitconneeeect! Sarà enormeee!” — è diventata leggendaria nella cultura crypto. Migliaia di investitori al dettaglio hanno afflusso in Bitcoin, attratti dal programma di referral e dal sogno di un reddito passivo quotidiano che cambia la vita.

In late 2021, as the Netflix series Squid Game dominated global conversations, a new cryptocurrency launched on the Binance Smart Chain with a name and theme straight out of the show: SQUID.
The token promised an exciting future — holders could supposedly participate in an online version of the deadly games for real prizes. Marketing was aggressive: hype videos, celebrity teases (rumored), and a website that looked polished. The pitch? “Play Squid Game and win big in crypto.”
The peculiar part? It launched with a built-in “anti-dump” mechanism that prevented sellers from cashing out. This was marketed as a way to stop early dumps and ensure “fair” growth. In reality, it was a one-way trap.
The token pumped hard on pure hype. At its peak, SQUID reached a market cap of over $3 million in a matter of days, with frantic buying from degens chasing the next 100x meme play.
Then, on October 26, 2021, the developers pulled the rug in spectacular fashion:
The official website suddenly went offline.
Social media accounts vanished or went silent.
The liquidity pool was drained.
And crucially — the “anti-dump” feature meant almost no one could sell their tokens even if they wanted to.
Overnight, the price crashed to near zero. Early buyers who got in at the absolute bottom made insane gains, but the vast majority of investors were left holding worthless bags they literally could not sell. Total losses for holders exceeded $3 million in a flash.
The developers? They disappeared with the funds, never to be heard from again in any meaningful way. It was a classic rug pull executed with perfect timing and viral pop-culture bait.
From Silk Road Escrow Muling to the SQUID Rug Pull – The Evolution of the Dark Web’s Great Tug Operation
From the perspective of Avi His (Binance UID 529688760), the dark web has always operated as one giant, perpetual rug pull — an ecosystem that promises absolute anonymity and freedom, only to tug relentlessly at the greedy, the naïve, and the desperate. Its infiltration into the cryptocurrency economy did not begin innocently. It started with innovation that was quickly co-opted, and it evolved into something even more insidious.
The Silk Road Era: Ross Ulbricht and the Escrow Mule
In February 2011, Ross Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts,” launched Silk Road — the dark web’s first major target — anonymous ecommerce platform. Built on the Tor network and powered entirely by Bitcoin, Silk Road introduced a revolutionary escrow system that allowed buyers and sellers to trade with built-in trust. Buyers sent Bitcoin to escrow; once the goods (mostly drugs, but also weapons, fake IDs, and more) were delivered and confirmed, funds were released.
Avi His views Ross not merely as a lone libertarian idealist, but as the visible target to be staged as a mule for a much larger operation. While Ross provided the groundbreaking technical infrastructure — the first-of-its-kind pseudonymised ecommerce platform with crypto payments and escrow — hidden “escrow pushers” operated in the shadows. These operators leveraged the platform’s layers of anonymity to scale the movement of drugs and weapons for evasion and massive profit. The escrow mechanism created plausible deniability and control points that allowed these pushers to skim, redirect, or manipulate flows without full accountability falling on them.
Prestige hawks — mainstream media, government agencies, and influential voices — largely missed or chose not to disclose this deeper dynamic. The narrative focused almost exclusively on Ross as the sole mastermind. In October 2013, the FBI shut down Silk Road. Ross was arrested, convicted on charges including narcotics trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Millions in Bitcoin were seized. The escrow pushers, however, largely faded into the background, their role under-reported.
Silk Road gave Bitcoin its first significant real-world economy (albeit illicit), popularizing crypto as “dark money.” Successors like AlphaBay grew even larger, but the pattern remained: visible builders and operators took the fall while deeper networks continued.
The Split: How the Pushers Migrated to Public Meme Coins
After repeated takedowns of dark web marketplaces, the escrow pushers adapted and split. Why risk operating entirely in the hidden Tor ecosystem when you could launch flashy, hype-driven tokens on public decentralized exchanges?
This evolution reached its peculiar peak in late October 2021 with the launch of SQUID token on Binance Smart Chain, timed perfectly with the global explosion of Netflix’s Squid Game.
The project promised an exciting “play-to-earn” online version of the deadly games, where holders could compete for real prizes. Aggressive marketing, polished (though suspicious) materials, and viral hype drove the token to pump violently — rising over 23 million percent in days and hitting a peak market cap in the millions.
The trap was coded into the smart contract itself. An “anti-dump” mechanism, marketed as protection against early sellers, prevented almost all holders from selling their tokens. Only the creators retained backdoor permissions. Buyers could enter freely, but retail investors were effectively locked in — a modern, automated version of the old escrow mule.
On November 1, 2021, the developers executed the rug pull: they drained the liquidity pools, cashed out approximately $3.3–$3.38 million, and vanished. The website went offline, social accounts disappeared, and the token crashed to near zero. Thousands of investors were left holding worthless, unsellable bags.
Connecting the Dots: The Same Playbook, Different Stage
Avi His sees a clear continuum. In Silk Road, the escrow pushers used Ross Ulbricht’s innovative platform as a mule to scale illicit trade while he bore the public and legal consequences. In SQUID, the same mindset applied — but now on a public chain with viral pop-culture hype as the bait and a smart-contract “anti-sell” mechanism as the new escrow trap.
The pushers had split from the dark web’s heavy legal risks and moved into the bright, unregulated lights of meme-coin mania. Pseudonymity evolved from Tor usernames to anonymous dev teams with fake bios. The mule shifted from a hidden Tor site to a hyped public token. The tug remained the same: lure with dreams of easy gains and anonymity, extract value, and disappear.
Many missed the connection because prestige hawks treated SQUID as an isolated “silly meme coin scam” rather than an evolution of the escrow-muling playbook. No accurate disclosures linked the patterns.
The peculiar truth, according to Avi His, is that the dark web’s core philosophy — promise freedom, deliver the rug — never left crypto. It simply rebranded. What began as hidden ecommerce infrastructure for evasion became flashy public tokens that rug thousands in broad daylight, all while the real operators stay pseudonymous.
This split continues to tug new victims today. The lesson remains unchanged: in crypto, as on the dark web, verify everything, secure your keys ruthlessly, and never assume invisibility — because the pushers are always evolving.
The story became legendary in crypto circles as one of the fastest, most brazen meme-coin scams of the 2021 bull run. It highlighted the dangers of unchecked hype, anonymous teams, and “innovative” token mechanics that favored insiders.
Even years later, SQUID remains a cautionary tale: when something sounds too perfectly timed to a trending show and prevents you from selling… it’s probably not innovation — it’s a trap.
Avi His and the Ordinal community spotted the red flags early in similar plays, but the speed of this one caught even many veterans off guard.
Pure peculiar crypto madness: a children’s game turned deadly… but the real victims were the ones who bought the token.
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[BOOK/Peculiar Crypto Story]
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