The price of a cryptocurrency based on the popular Netflix show Squid Game has crashed to $0 in what is likely to have been a scam.

It climbed above $3,795 ($US2,856) on Monday evening (AEDT), after surging by 310,000 per cent in a matter of hours.

But within five minutes (at 8:40pm AEDT), Squid had lost all its value, according to CoinMarketCap.

This was after Twitter restricted the cryptocurrency token's account because of "unusual activity". The Squid crypto's website and its white paper (which explains its purpose) have also disappeared from the Internet.

There was also a warning on CoinMarketCap's website saying:

"We have received multiple reports that the website and socials are no longer functional & the users are not able to sell this token in Pancakeswap.

"Please do your own due diligence and exercise extreme caution.

This project, while clearly inspired by the Netflix show of the same name, is not affiliated with the official IP."

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When it launched in late October, Squid was promoted as a token that could be used for a new online game inspired by the hit Korean language TV show — in which indebted people participate in a deadly tournament of children's games.

The creators of Squid may have pocketed more than $2.6 million ($US2 million) after the crash of their viral token, in an apparent "rug pull" scam, according to Gizmodo.

A "rug pull" occurs when the creators cash out of their crypto tokens and exchange it for real money, which causes the crypto's value to plunge.

An anonymous Squid investor told CoinMarketCap, "I lost all of what I had in this project", after investing $6,641 ($US5,000) into the cryptocurrency.

Netflix said it was not affiliated with the Squid cryptocurrency.

Australian consumers have lost more than $70 million as a result of investment scams in the first half of this year, according to a report from the the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in August.

At the time, ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard said: "More than half of the $70 million in losses were to cryptocurrency, especially through bitcoin, and cryptocurrency scams were also the most commonly reported type of investment scam, with 2,240 reports."