GameStop’s stock soars over 30% after normal business hours and cheers from Reddit crowds, after plans for the NFT platform report
The actions of GameStop Corp. pointed to a double-digit increase after a report it was launching a division to develop a market for non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, making a foray into the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
GameStop GME actions,
rose more than 30% to solid volume of around 1.7 million shares on Thursday after hours, which doesn’t always translate into gains in regular trading on Wall Street.
Still, the news seemed to give a jerk to the meme asset that tends to move on social media trends and less on fundamentals.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that GameStop has hired nearly two dozen people to operate an NFT platform, which is intended to be used to trade virtual assets in video games.
The report says that GameStop is asking some game developers and publishers to list NFTs in its market when it launches later this year, people said.
GameStop Retail ‘Apes’ has been expecting news of an NFT market and a crypto game for months, saying it is a key part of the president’s recovery master plan company Ryan Cohen, and it’s been over a year to hear it since Cohen, as an activist investor, took a significant stake in the video game retailer and triggered the January 2020 short squeeze. .
Much of Thursday’s after-hours action was seen by the Reddit crowd as positive proof that they were right from the start.
GameStop shares rose 1.3% on an otherwise gloomy day on Wall Street Thursday, where the S&P 500 SPX index,
the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP,
all ended in negative territory, amid lingering concerns over inflation and hawkish policies aimed at tackling pricing pressures from the Federal Reserve.
GameStop’s shares, however, for the week are down 11.7%, according to FactSet data.
The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch’s sister publication, wrote, citing people familiar, that GameStop was “about to enter into partnerships with two crypto companies to share the technology and co-invest in the development of games using the blockchain and NFT technology â€.