GameStop announced on Wednesday it had purchased 4,710 Bitcoins. This is worth more than $500 million at the time of purchase.
Video game retail chains have struggled to relate to an era when digital game purchases are becoming more and more popular. Additionally, the company has made a new kind of infamous name when it became the center of the short aperture in 2021.
GameStop’s inventory is bulging a bit from its pre-interference location on Reddit Community R/Wallstreetbets, but with years away from the unpredictable moments of the spotlight, GameStop reports an annual decline in net sales.
To support the finances, GameStop announced in March that it would update its investment policy to investors to add Bitcoin as a Ministry of Finance’s protected assets. Today’s news represents GameStop’s follow-through on that promise. GameStop stocks stumbled after every Crypto-related announcement due to investors’ concerns about Crypto’s historic volatility.
GameStop’s recent interest in Bitcoin is not as random as it looks.
Under then-President Joe Biden, the US government cracked down on the crypto industry for links between fraud and corruption. Now, the Trump administration has reversed the script and established a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Trump’s media companies also plan to raise $2.5 billion to buy Bitcoin.
Trump invited his Memecoin top holder (a volatile cryptocurrency that is not plagued by the real determinants of value).
As Trump and his family got more involved in the code, his enemies raised concerns about Trump’s ability to manipulate the crypto market for his own financial interests.
Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), co-hosted by 17 other Democrat senators, responded to an increase in crypto investment with the “final crypto corruption law.”
“A person who wants to develop influence with the president now can personally enrich him by purchasing cryptocurrencies he owns or manages,” Senator Merckley said in a press release. “This is a very corrupt scheme. It puts our national security at risk and erodes the public’s trust in the government.”
But without support across the aisle, these efforts to ease Trump’s ethically questionable crypto investments are unlikely to gain momentum.
With the US government on its side, Bitcoin prices jumped to an all-time high in May, falling to around $75,000 in April before breaking the $110,000 mark. Companies such as Tesla, Coinbase and Bullock have already purchased a large amount of Bitcoin as a way to expand their assets, each holding over $1 billion in Bitcoin.
Today, with the purchase of large-scale Bitcoin, GameStop is following in the footsteps of these companies.