Yeah, it’s a big deal. Remember the NFT stock craze a couple months ago? Everyone was rushing to pump out NFT news. Most of those companies haven’t actually developed any NFTs yet.
In my opinion, the biggest weakness to NFTs is a lack of utility. The most popular NFT medium was NBA Tipshot. People were literally paying tens of thousands of dollars to “own” a 10 second highlight video. A video you can go lookup and watch on YouTube whenever you want. But yeah, you own that clip I guess.
What GameStop is doing is creating utility for NFTs. We all know video games are mostly digital now, and moving more and more in that direction. We knew GameStop was going to go that way. But this?
GameStop is about to release the FIRST actual use-case for NFTs at scale. They are going to use NFTs to establish official ownership for digital copies of games. This will allow the sale of used games, and will allow GameStop to transition one of their oldest business niches to the digital world. And it will be a global, widespread use-case for NFT technology. Nobody in the world has established an actual use-case for NFTs. GameStop just did.
This doesn’t just put them on the forefront of digital gaming. This also puts them at the forefront of the NFT industry. They could become a global leader in NFTs along with being the global leader in gaming. This also gives them an edge to beat Steam to the next level of the digital gaming industry.
This is it. GameStop just became the final boss. I knew Ryan Cohen was a genius, but holy shit. He did it. GameStop did it. There is no beating this. GameStop is now very undervalued from a fundamental standpoint, and shorts are 100% fukt. There’s no way out, especially if they’re also using GameStop tokens for a crypto dividend.
Edit 1:
Let’s look at the data indicating there will be a crypto dividend.
As of today, according to fintel there are about 15million shares owned by insiders. There are about 70million shares outstanding. This gives us about 55million shares that are owned by institutions and retail, who would be due a dividend.
If you look up the GameStop token, the maximum number of tokens in existence is about 58million. This is oddly similar to the number of dividends that would be due.
I’m confident striking this section out at this point, as the 58mil inventory was an unofficial token. The post by teacoar___ linked below is info on the official token, which can be found with the address at the bottom of the page on nft.gamestop.com.
Edit within an edit, editception if you will: it’s been pointed out that the 58million max tokens may not be the official GME token, but that there is an official GME token with currently 0 inventory launching on 7/14.
u/teacoat___ put together a good summary of all of the available info on the token and they are updating it as new info comes in.
If GameStop does a crypto dividend it would force shorts to do one of two things:
- Close their short position.
- Deliver a GameStop token to every share they’ve borrowed.
Given that the number of GameStop tokens in existence is limited, they will be forced to either cause a short squeeze on GME itself or cause a squeeze on the tokens. Either way they’re fucked.
Edit 2: thanks to u/RileyArlic for this nugget
NFTs in gaming also add another layer of collectibles to the gaming industry. NFT creates a digital signature of ownership, so you know and can prove who owned the game before. Imagine a used copy of NBA 2K previously owned by Jordan or LeBron. Also imagine you bought it directly from them, so the only people that have ever owned the copy are Jordan and then you.
You’ve got a used game digital marketplace, but you also have another level of collectors copies based on famous ownership.
Edit 3: this one from an idea pitched by u/thunder12123
This is one of my favorite angles, so I’m going to hold the entire thing
The GME NFT could also be used/linked with gaming developers for in-game currency. If there were partnerships with major gaming developers, you could have a universal gaming currency.
How many times have you wanted to purchase something in-game that costs 700 game-coins, but they only sell in batches of 500 or 1,200? You have to buy more than you need, essentially wasting money. What if there was a universal gaming currency that could be used in any game. Maybe… A GS token? You could have a bank of gaming currency to use on in-game items and never have to worry about having money tied up within a single game that you didn’t use.
GameStop would be able to earn transaction fees on all in-game content purchases through their NFT if they could pull this off.
Edit 4: another idea, this one courtesy of u/magnacor8
NFT speedrunning. We all know there is a niche fanbase for speedrunning videogames. Now there can be actual value to it. You can actual own the fastest speedrun in the world. You accomplish it, you own it.
Also, NFT gamesaves – not sure of the utility here, but NFTs could be used to send your version of the game to someone. Magnacor8 mentions that it could be useful to forever have the “big brother” cheat, even when you don’t live together. Can’t beat a boss? Send it to someone and they can beat it and send it back.
There are so many layers to this news it’s insane