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Scene from “Squid Game” by Netflix
Source: Netflix

When Bernard heard about a token named after the popular South Korean Netflix series “Squid Game,” which chronicles the lives of cash-strapped adults who play in a deadly tournament for a big jackpot, he did a quick scan on Google to see if the coin was legit.

After catching headlines – but before reading the full articles, many of which warned of some red flags around the project – he decided to invest his entire life savings of $28,000 into SQUID, a coin that billed itself as a “play-to-earn” cryptocurrency. On Monday, the token hit a high of just over $2,860, before plummeting to nearly zero, according to CoinMarketCap.

“My rush to buy this token is for a single idea that went into my brain that ‘Squid Game’ is very, very popular now, and its token must be popular now,” said Bernard, who lives in Shanghai, and asked to be identified only by his English first name because trading in cryptocurrency is of questionable legality in China. “It’s a tragedy. I don’t know how to recover my loss.”

Bernard tells CNBC that he supports his family and is now worried about how to pay his bills.

Transaction records from BscScan appear to show the token’s anonymous creators collected least $3.4 million in investor funds. The crypto ecosystem is rife with so-called “rug pull” schemes wherein token founders abruptly abandon their project and take investor funds with them by swapping the project coin for cash.

“Squid Game Dev does not want to continue running the project as we are depressed from the scammers and is overwhelmed with stress,” Squid developers posted Monday in their Telegram channel, which now has more than 89,000 members.

The token’s white paper and website have since disappeared, though archived copies of its official landing page and white paper are still online. Twitter has temporarily restricted its account due to “suspicious activity.” The creators did not respond to multiple emails that CNBC sent to the addresses listed on the web site.

Bernard says he has reached out to the FBI and the SEC about his lost investment.

He has also reached out to the team behind the token, as well as Binance-owned CoinMarketCap, which listed the coin on its website, both of whom “did not take responsibility” for his loss.

Bernard, who says he has a lot of experience in crypto and computers, blames media outlets for his investment in SQUID as well.

He isn’t alone. Others have taken to Twitter to say that giving any oxygen to meme coins like this one functions as an implicit endorsement.

“In this trading space, everyone will rush,” said Bernard, “and sometimes you feel FOMO.” That sense of FOMO, or the fear of missing out, is a common sentiment among crypto traders who invest in early-stage altcoins, eager for a chance at big and quick returns on their investment.

‘Some have a shot at going nuts’

Saurabh Dubey has been interested in cryptocurrencies since 2016. He now works for an accounting firm in the U.S., and in his free time, he regularly day trades new altcoins.

Just past midnight each day, Dubey looks at new coins being listed on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, trying to identify trends based on the charts. He typically places bets of around $100 on coins that he thinks show promise in their initial price movements.

“Some have a shot at going nuts,” he said.

Dubey says that he used the proceeds from a recent successful bet on another meme coin to invest $250 into SQUID.

“I thought I’ll play with house money,” said Dubey.

This was when SQUID was trading at about 4 cents – well before all the media hype began.

Dubey says he invested in SQUID because it was the second-ranked token on CoinMarketCap’s list of the most recently listed coins.

“I picked it up because it already had some amount of volume and already had some amount of gain, and if you look at the chart, you will see that the chart mimics the start of how SafeMoon got started,” said Dubey, referring to an altcoin launched in March that appreciated quickly and is still being traded.

He noted that his investment was a gut move more than anything else. “It wasn’t scientific.”

But then Dubey started to notice all the red flags, many of which he hoped were not that big a deal.

“The biggest flag was that it never had a dip,” explained Dubey. “Every coin has to have a dip. There is no way a coin goes up constantly for five days…The only thing that looked like a dip was when it stayed at the same level.”

The level of price appreciation was another big concern. “When it hit $1, I was like, ‘Okay, 20x is reasonable. That can happen.’ When it got to $10, that’s when I started thinking there’s something off,” he said.

“Most coins that actually have a product behind them are barely able to reach that point,” continued Dubey.

Another red flag: None of the token’s founders could be found on LinkedIn, plus its website and white paper were filled with grammatical and spelling errors.

Ultimately, Dubey’s exposure was limited, but investors like Bernard who gambled all their savings on this coin want the creators behind the project to be held accountable.

Bernard, who has been proactive in reaching out to U.S. authorities, says that his hands are tied to take any further action, because he can’t file a report with local police.

“In China, it’s not so legal to trade cryptocurrencies,” Bernard shared with CNBC.

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Tesla investors are growing wary of Elon Musk’s futuristic promises

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Tesla investors are growing wary of Elon Musk's futuristic promises

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

At Tesla, vehicle sales are slumping, profits are thinning and revenue from regulatory credit sales are poised to dry up due to Republican-led policy changes.

In the past, CEO Elon Musk’s futuristic promises have convinced investors to look past top and bottom line numbers.

Not now.

Following another fairly dismal earnings report this week, Musk told analysts on the call that Tesla’s electric vehicles will soon become driverless, making money for owners while they sleep. He also said Tesla’s robotaxi service, which the company recently started testing in a limited capacity in Austin, Texas, will expand to other states, with a goal of being able to reach half the U.S. population by year-end, “assuming we have regulatory approvals.”

It didn’t matter.

Tesla shares plummeted 8% on Thursday as investors focused on the immediate challenges facing the company, including the rapid rise of lower-cost EV competitors, particularly in China, and a political backlash against Musk that harmed Tesla’s brand in the U.S. and Europe.

Automotive sales declined 16% year-over-year in the second quarter for the EV maker, with weak sales numbers continuing in Europe and California. Musk said there could be a “few rough quarters” ahead because of the EV credits expiring and President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The stock bounced back some on Friday, gaining 3.5%, but still ended the week down and has now fallen 22% this year, the worst performance among tech’s megacaps. The Nasdaq rose 1% for the week and is up more than 9% in 2025, closing at a record on Friday.

“Look, we love robotaxis. And robots,” wrote analysts at Canaccord Genuity, who recommend buying Tesla’s stock, in a note after the earnings report. “Over time, Tesla is well positioned to benefit from these future-forward opportunities.”

The analysts, however, said that they’re focused on the profit and loss statement, writing: “But we love growth too, in the here and now. We need the P&L dynamics to turn.”

Analysts at Jefferies described the earnings update as “a bit dull.” And Goldman Sachs said Tesla’s robotaxi effort is “still small” with limited technical data points.

Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Canaccord Genuity's Gianarikas: We may have seen the bottom for Tesla, positive acceleration to come

Musk, who has previously called himself “pathologically optimistic,” has been able to sway shareholders and send the stock soaring at times with promises of self-driving cars, humanoid robots and more affordable EVs.

But after a decade of missed self-imposed deadlines on autonomous driving, Wall Street is watching Tesla fall behind Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China.

In Tesla’s shareholder deck, the company said the second quarter marked the start of its “transition from leading the electric vehicle and renewable energy industries to also becoming a leader in AI, robotics and related services.” The company didn’t offer any new guidance for growth or profits for the year ahead.

Regulatory hurdles

Business Insider reported on Friday that Tesla told staff its robotaxi service could launch in the San Francisco Bay Area as soon as this weekend.

But Tesla hasn’t applied for permits that would be required to run a driverless ridehailing service in California, CNBC confirmed. The company would first need authorizations from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

The CPUC told CNBC on Friday, that under existing permits, Tesla can only operate a human-driven chartered vehicle service, not carry passengers in robotaxis.

Waymo driverless vehicles wait at a traffic light in Santa Monica, California, on May 30, 2025.

Daniel Cole | Reuters

On the earnings call, Musk and other Tesla execs claimed the company was working on regulatory approvals to launch in Nevada, Arizona, Florida and other markets, in addition to San Francisco, but offered no details about what would be required.

Within Austin, the company said its robotaxi service had driven 7,000 miles, and that Tesla has been restricting its robotaxis’ to roads with a speed limit of 40 miles per hour. The Austin service involves a small fleet of about 10 to 20 Model Y vehicles equipped with the company’s latest self-driving systems.

The Tesla robotaxis rely on remote supervision by employees in a customer service center, and a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat, ready to intervene if needed.

Compare that to what Alphabet said on its second-quarter earnings call the same day as Tesla’s results.

“The Waymo Driver has now autonomously driven over 100 million miles on public roads, and the team is testing across more than 10 cities this year, including New York and Philadelphia,” Alphabet said. Meanwhile, Waymo has become significant enough that Alphabet added a category to its Other Bets revenue description in its latest quarterly filing.

“Revenues from Other Bets are generated primarily from the sale of autonomous transportation services, healthcare-related services and internet services,” the filing said. The Other Bets segment remains relatively small, with revenue coming in at $373 million in the quarter. 

Regardless of investor skepticism, Musk is more bullish than ever.

On Friday, the world’s richest person posted on his social network X that he thinks Tesla will someday be worth $20 trillion. On the earnings call earlier in the week, he said that when it comes to AI for cars and robots, “Tesla is actually much better than Google by far” and “much better than anyone at real world AI.”

CORRECTION: The Waymo Driver has now autonomously driven over 100 million miles on public roads, according to Alphabet. A previous version misstated the number of miles.

WATCH: Tough quarter for Tesla

Ex-Tesla Board Member: Tough quarter for the EV-maker

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Tesla plans ‘friends and family’ car service in California, regulator says

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Tesla plans 'friends and family' car service in California, regulator says

A vehicle Tesla is using for robotaxi testing purposes on Oltorf Street in Austin, Texas, US, on Sunday, June 22, 2025.

Tim Goessman | Bloomberg | Getty Images

In an earnings call this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased an expansion of his company’s fledgling robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area and other U.S. markets.

But California regulators are making clear that Tesla is not authorized to carry passengers on public roads in autonomous vehicles and would require a human driver in control at all times.

“Tesla is not allowed to test or transport the public (paid or unpaid) in an AV with or without a driver,” the California Public Utilities Commission told CNBC in an email on Friday. “Tesla is allowed to transport the public (paid or unpaid) in a non-AV, which, of course, would have a driver.”

In other words, Tesla’s service in the state will have to be more taxi than robot.

Tesla has what’s known in California as a charter-party carrier permit, which allows it to run a private car service with human drivers, similar to limousine companies or sightseeing services.

The commission said it received a notification from Tesla on Thursday that the company plans to “extend operations” under its permit to “offer service to friends and family of employees and to select members of the public,” across much of the Bay Area.

But under Tesla’s permit, that service can only be with non-AVs, the CPUC said.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles told CNBC that Tesla has had a “drivered testing permit” since 2014, allowing the company to operate AVs with a safety driver present, but not to collect fees. The safety drivers must be Tesla employees, contractors or designees of the manufacturer under that permit, the DMV said.

In Austin, Texas, Tesla is currently testing out a robotaxi service, using its Model Y SUVs equipped with the company’s latest automated driving software and hardware. The limited service operates during daylight hours and in good weather, on roads with a speed limit of 40 miles per hour. 

Robotaxis in Austin are remotely supervised by Tesla employees, and include a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat. The service is now limited to invited users, who agree to the terms of Tesla’s “early access program.”

EV price war is bleeding into robotaxis, intelligent driving: Expert

On Friday, Business Insider, citing an internal Tesla memo, reported that Tesla told staff it planned to expand its robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on that report.

In a separate matter in California, the DMV has accused Tesla of misleading consumers about the capabilities of its driver assistance systems, previously marketed under the names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (or FSD).

Tesla now calls its premium driver assistance features, “FSD Supervised.” In owners manuals, Tesla says Autopilot and FSD Supervised are “hands on” systems, requiring a driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at all times. 

But in user-generated videos shared by Tesla on X, the company shows customers using FSD hands-free while engaged in other tasks. The DMV is arguing that Tesla’s license to sell vehicles in California should be suspended, with arguments ongoing through Friday at the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings in Oakland.

Under California state law, autonomous taxi services are regulated at the state level. Some city and county officials said on Friday that they were out of the loop regarding a potential Tesla service in the state. 

Stephanie Moulton-Peters, a member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in a phone interview that she had not heard from Tesla about its plans. She urged the company to be more transparent.

“I certainly expect they will tell us and I think it’s a good business practice to do that,” she said.

Moulton-Peters said she was undecided on robotaxis generally and wasn’t sure how Marin County, located north of San Francisco, would react to Tesla’s service.

“The news of change coming always has mixed results in the community,” she said. 

Brian Colbert, another member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in an interview that he’s open to the idea of Tesla’s service being a good thing but that he was disappointed in the lack of communication. 

“They should have done a better job about informing the community about the launch,” he said. 

Alphabet’s Waymo, which is far ahead of Tesla in the robotaxi market, obtained a number of permits from the DMV and CPUC before starting its driverless ride-hailing service in the state.

Waymo was granted a CPUC driverless deployment permit in 2023, allowing it to charge for rides in the state. The company has been seeking amendments to both its DMV and CPUC driverless deployment permits as it expands its service territory in the state.

— NBC’s David Ingram reported from San Francisco.

WATCH: Waymo testing self-driving cars with human drivers in New York and Philadelphia

Waymo begins testing self-driving cars with human drivers in New York and Philadelphia

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Mark Zuckerberg names ex-OpenAI employee chief scientist of new Meta AI lab

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Mark Zuckerberg names ex-OpenAI employee chief scientist of new Meta AI lab

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event, at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announced a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers. 

Zhao’s name was listed among other new hires in the June memo, but Zuckerberg said Friday that Zhao co-founded the lab and “has been our lead scientist from day one.” Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who is acting as Meta’s chief AI officer.

“Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field,” Zuckerberg wrote in a social media post. “I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.”

Read more CNBC tech news

In addition to co-creating ChatGPT, Zhao helped build OpenAI’s GPT-4, mini models, 4.1 and o3, and he previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, according to Zuckerberg’s June memo.

Meta Superintelligence Labs will be where employees work on foundation models such as the open-source Llama family of AI models, products and Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research projects.

The social media company will invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into AI compute infrastructure, Zuckerberg said earlier this month.

“The next few years are going to be very exciting!” Zuckerberg wrote Friday.

WATCH: Meta announces massive ‘Prometheus’ & ‘Hyperion’ data center plans

Meta announces massive 'Prometheus' & 'Hyperion' data center plans

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