The US-based videogame retailer GameStop (GME) saga that eventually spilled into the cryptoverse just was restarted.
While things might’ve been relatively quiet on that front in the past few days, the company’s stocks have jumped more than a 100% yet again before sinking sharply.
The price doubled yesterday and, after surging higher today, corrected down, setting off its third trading halt for volatility in the past 24 hours. At the time of writing (15:13 UTC), it trades around USD 92, dropping from USD 175, reached today.
Though this jump is valuable, it’s striking that the price had risen as high as USD 483 last month.
According Bloomberg data,
“GameStop’s surge in Wednesday’s cash session was spurred by a final-hour rally that brought its biggest advance since Jan. 29, the day Robinhood Markets restricted trading in it and 49 other stocks at the height of the frenzy,”
As to why the rally occurred, there are various explanations, including Chief Financial Officer Jim Bell being “pushed out in a disagreement over strategy,” in favor of Ryan Cohen, the co-founder of online pet-food retailer Chewy.com.
Others recommended that institutional investors might be behind the price jump.
Last Wednesday, as the price jumped, Reddit went down for several users for about an hour, with the company stating that the unspecified issue was identified and fixed and the incident cleared. This is relevant as Reddit is home to the subreddit that started the saga in the first place, WallStreetBets (WSB), but it’s unclear if a rush of traffic had had anything to do with Reddit crashing.
The WSB members, now 9.3m-strong, have been writing of a ‘revival’ and turned tables, stating that they are refueled, ready for the round 2 and flight to Pluto, praising the hodlers and calling for continued hodling, arguing that there are bound to be bumps on the road, and one saying that “if GameStop hits 800 before 2/26 we will trigger the Mother of All Short Squeezes.”
“It seems like the Reddit crowd is still active and when you see a bit of news like that they’re pressing again,” Keith Gangl, portfolio manager at Gradient Investments, told Bloomberg, adding: “Though I’m not sure how that’ll last.”
Meantime, CNBC TV host and TheStreet founder Jim Cramer suggested to GameStop in a series of tweets to purchase USD 1bn in Bitcoin (BTC):
This comes as several companies, possibly most prominently MicroStrategy, Square, and Tesla, have recently invested in bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.
As announced last week, many of the saga’s key players testified before the American House of Representatives, including Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, the under-fire Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, and WSB member, investor, and YouTuber Roaring Kitty (real name Keith Gill).
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