Author: Wu Tianyi, DeThings

On May 13th, according to Bloomberg, GameStop stock (GME) surged by 110%, then gave back the gains, and the stock was halted multiple times due to the significant increase. On Monday of this week, it broke through $30 per share and closed up 75%. Its stock price has been on the rise, with an increase of about 60% in the past two weeks. In addition, according to data from S3 Partner, short sellers lost $1 billion due to GameStop's sudden price surge.

The reason for this surge is that user Roaring Kitty (also known as Keith Gill) has returned to the public eye. On Sunday, Keith Gill posted a photo on X, a gaming emoticon, which seemed to be taking the game very seriously. The post received over 81,000 likes and 9,000 comments. This is his first interaction with the social media platform in three years.

According to CNBC, in 2021, Roaring Kitty encouraged a large number of day traders to invest heavily in GameStop stock, triggering a "meme stock" craze. In 2021, GameStop was a video game retailer, and as consumers rapidly shifted from discs to digital downloads, the company was struggling to survive. Large Wall Street hedge funds and major investors were shorting the company or its stock, believing that its stock price would continue to plummet.

Gill and those who agreed with his views changed the trajectory of this seemingly bankrupt company by purchasing thousands of shares of GameStop stock, despite almost all recognized indicators telling investors that the company was in serious trouble.

This marked the beginning of the so-called "short squeeze," where those who had shorted GameStop were forced to buy its rapidly rising stock to offset massive losses.

According to Wikipedia, the investment frenzy in 2021 also led to a surge in the price of Dogecoin, as users of the Reddit forums r/CryptoCurrency and r/SatoshiStreetBets attempted to raise the price of Dogecoin to make it the next Bitcoin. The price of Dogecoin rose by over 370%. From January to May 2021, the price of Dogecoin rose by over 12,000%, reaching a market value of over $90 billion, partly due to endorsements from Elon Musk and other celebrities.

After 2021, GameStop began to enter the cryptocurrency industry. In 2022, according to Decrypt, the game retailer GameStop stated that it would no longer focus on cryptocurrency after a net loss of $94.7 million in the third quarter and layoffs in the digital asset department. GameStop CEO Matt Furlong stated that the company had "actively minimized the risk of cryptocurrency over the past year" and currently "does not hold any substantial balance of tokens." He also stated, "Although we still believe that digital assets have long-term potential in the gaming world, GameStop does not and will not risk investing a large amount of shareholder capital in this area."

Furthermore, according to a filing submitted to the stock exchange on December 7th, GameStop seems to still be advancing its NFT and blockchain plans.

In August 2023, according to Bloomberg, the game retailer GameStop stated that it would stop supporting its crypto wallet due to "regulatory uncertainty." According to the company's website, GameStop would remove its iOS and browser plugin wallets from the market on November 1st, which allowed users to manage their cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

On January 1, 2024, according to Decrypt, after operating an NFT marketplace for a year and a half, the video game retailer GameStop decided to shut it down. Its website stated, "Due to ongoing regulatory uncertainty in the cryptocurrency space, GameStop has decided to close the NFT marketplace," and added that the marketplace would cease operations on February 2nd of this year.

Before the surge in GameStop stock, its situation was similar to that of 2021, where all aspects of its business seemed to be in trouble, and once again, Roaring Kitty drove its stock price up.

Furthermore, influenced by Roaring Kitty, data from Santiment shows that the namesake MEME token $KITTY surged over 55 times in 24 hours, with a current market value of $7.2 million and a trading volume of over $10 million in 24 hours. Cryptocurrencies using the GameStop name, logo, and stock code also surged by over 1,400% on the same day. A token called GameStop (GME) also surged by 343%, with a market value of approximately $17 million. However, this token has no relation to the GameStop company itself.

As GameStop stock rose, traders showed strong interest in meme tokens. Data from Santiment shows that social interest in FLOKI surged by 145%. The social volume of Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), PEPE, dogwifhat (WIF), and BONK also increased by 22%, 46%, 82.7%, 51.7%, and 39.4%, respectively. The price of PEPE rose by 17.1% in the past 24 hours and continued to reach a historical high of $0.00001023.

According to Santiment's data, the trading volume of these tokens also saw a significant increase of over 200%. Meanwhile, as the meme frenzy continued to heat up, the political meme token MAGA (Trump) related to Donald Trump rose by 22.8% on the same day. The meme coin category also rose by nearly 6% in the past 24 hours.

However, some analysts pointed out the disconnect between GameStop stock and the GameStop company. Over the past three years, this game retailer has almost consistently reported losses every quarter.

eToro market analyst Josh Gilbert stated, "I think this will definitely trigger some short-term trends for these assets, but it's hard to see any long-term trends," he said.

Furthermore, Gilbert pointed out that compared to 2021, the outstanding short interest in assets like GameStop is much smaller, which means that the "scale of the rise" may also be smaller.

"The current environment is incomparable to 2021, when interest rates were at their lowest, governments around the world were providing fiscal stimulus, and major economies had almost no inflation."

"The interest rate in the United States is 5.5%, and a global cost of living crisis is unfolding. In short, consumers are unlikely to be in the same position as in 2021, which has a huge impact on financial decisions," Gilbert added. "Most investors now understand how speculative rebounds end and are more likely to take a more cautious approach."

Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute, stated that the rise of GameStop could actually affect cryptocurrencies.

"Roaring Kitty's return is bearish for cryptocurrencies, as it is actually diverting investors' attention," he said.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。