Gamestop (GME) stock rose only a little bit in the pre market trading as news of a possible NFT platform on the Ethereum blockchain swept through Twitter.
According to an information trail on Twitter, GameStop Corp (NYSE: GME) may be working on an NFT platform based on Ethereum. The Twitter handle ‘croissant’ alleges that the American video game company is looking to tap into the vast opportunities of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). However, at press time, there was no official confirmation from GameStop.
GME first announced in late May that it would start developing NFTs and launched a special website. However, the website provides very little information apart from a large Ethereum logo.
Earlier in the year, GME became a meme stock as its share price surged 600% in a few days. This was as a result of several retail-oriented investors taking bets against Wall Street short positions. Stock prices went from about $43 to a whopping $294 in a matter of days. The frenzy during that period drew the attention of the crypto community as well as established players in the investment space. Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk even famously dubbed it “Gamestonk” as his own reaction. GME stock is currently trading at $213 and the company has since leveraged its position since that meme period. As ‘croissant’ put it:
“It gave GameStop a tremendous treasure chest of funds to work with and use to advance their new CEO’s vision of becoming the Amazon of gaming.”
The Twitter handle revealed to its 53,400 followers that “A massive surge of users are about to come to $ETH”. ‘Croissant’ went further to detail the speculations in a thread. In addition, the Twitter handle noted that integrating NFTs with GameStop may yield more users for the company.
Principal Engineer of GameStop, Jordan Holberg, also weighed in on this. According to Holberg, the video game giant wants to be the “bridge between the old and the new – traditional “legacy” e-commerce and the next generation of blockchain.”
Twitter Observer Points to Industry Moves as Proof of Gamestop NFT Plan
In addition, ‘croissant’ pointed out that several recent company hires were from the crypto and blockchain space. This, it believes, backs up GameStop’s intentions to begin developing NFTs in earnest. The Twitter handle says users and traders will be able to interact with added benefits provided by the Ethereum blockchain. This includes a wider range of decentralized authenticated applications that do not affect privacy. ‘Croissant’ notes that this move is “a very significant step for their entire user base”. It concluded by stating that GameStop was in the beginning stages of widespread adoption of the Ethereum blockchain.
The Ethereum Layer 2 solutions may be what will facilitate this onboarding of countless users. This is because Ethereum Layer 1 seems incapable at the moment due to surging gas prices from the NFT frenzy.
GameStop has its headquarters in Grapevine, Texas, which is a Dallas suburb. The company was founded in 1984 and ranks 521st on the Fortune 500. As the world’s largest video game retailer, it operates chains of stores in the US, Australia, Canada, and Europe.
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