GameStop shares spike on news of creating an NFT marketplace

GameStop shares gained 22% successful extended trading connected Thursday aft a Wall Street Journal study disclosed that the gaming merchandise retailer plans to make a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. The report, which cited radical acquainted with the matter, further divulged that GameStop seeks to forge cryptocurrency partnerships to make games and products for the NFT marketplace.

Reportedly, the Grapevine, Texas-based institution has hired implicit 20 radical to tally the NFT business, which volition diagnostic an online hub for buying, selling, and trading NFTs of virtual videogame goods specified arsenic avatar outfits and weapons.

At the clip of writing, the GameStop banal (GME) is changing hands astatine $131.03. This terms represents a 1.28% summation successful the day. By tapping into the booming NFT market, GameStop could get a much-needed alteration of gait that frees it from its inclination of registering monolithic losses contempt the resilience of its stock.

GameStop presently relies connected brick-and-mortar income of caller and utilized carnal video games. However, Ryan Cohen, the company’s newly-elected Board Chairman, is keen connected steering the institution successful a exertion direction.

Notably, GameStop’s determination to clasp NFTs is not new. The institution rolled retired a bare-bone website dubbed GameStop NFT successful May 2021.

The website invited contented creators to instrumentality portion successful shaping the NFT platform, noting,

“We invited exceptional engineers (solidity, react, python), designers, gamers, marketers, and assemblage leaders. If you privation to articulation our team, nonstop your illustration oregon thing you've built to: [email protected]”

Forging strategical partnerships 

Per the sources, GameStop is asking prime crippled developers and publishers to database NFTs connected its marketplace erstwhile it launches aboriginal this year. Specifically, the steadfast is inching person to inking 2 strategical partnerships with 2 crypto firms that would stock their exertion and co-invest successful games, arsenic good arsenic different NFT-related initiatives.

Loopring, a layer-2 protocol rumoured to beryllium 1 of the companies moving with GameStop, besides saw its autochthonal token surge. At the clip of writing, Loopring (LRC), the 61st-largest crypto by marketplace capitalization, is up 6.66% implicit the past 24 hours to alteration hands astatine $1.81.

While integrating NFTs into its concern mightiness assistance crook GameStop’s luck around, it is worthy noting that the program is risky. Experts judge that the NFT abstraction is simply a monolithic bubble that volition inevitably burst, leaving investors devastated.