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GameStop Launches NFT Marketplace (cnbc.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the digital-assets dept.
GameStop on Monday announced the long-awaited debut of its online marketplace for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, in a bid to reinvent its business and cash in on consumer adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. CNBC reports: The platform, which is now open to the public for beta testing, allows users to connect their own digital asset wallets, including the recently launched GameStop Wallet, the company said in a press release. They will then be able to buy, sell and trade NFTs of virtual goods. Over time, the marketplace will expand to offer other features such as Web3 gaming, GameStop said. "Currently, the marketplace plays host to an array of artwork projects that run on the Ethereum mainnet as well as Loopring, a layer-2 scaling solution," adds Decrypt. "GameStop previously announced a partnership to use the Immutable X layer-2 scaling network, but the marketplace notes that Immutable X support is 'coming soon.'"

"GameStop and Immutable X launched a $100 million token grant fund to bring game developers onto the marketplace. A press release notes that gaming NFTs will be added in the future."

Further reading: Game Developer On 'Why NFTs Are a Nightmare'
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GameStop Launches NFT Marketplace More

GameStop Launches NFT Marketplace

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  • Oh dear lord (Score:5, Informative)

    by aerogems ( 339274 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @08:32PM (#62694960)

    It's just time to pack it in guys. GameStop has been slowly dying for many years and now it's just getting painful to watch. You had a good run, but it's time to quit while you can still do it on your own terms.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      I remember their attempts at making an online gaming server, a la Steam. That failed miserably, and anyone who ever bought games there, well, they were fucked.

      Sounds similar to this :)

    • I'm convinced they're actively trying to crash it into the rocks.

      • Re:Oh dear lord (Score:5, Insightful)

        by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @11:06AM (#62696692) Journal

        Close, they are trying to recover form someone trying to crash it into the rocks. Basically, GameStop was targeted by short hedge funds for celler-boxing, a technique where a stock is driven to the lowest possible point and then allowed to fluctuate, making gains (and losses) of 100% or more commonplace. The end game is to bankrupt the company, so the shorts never have to cover the positions they used to manipulate the price.

        The MO of these operations is to find a troubled company, preferably one that competes with Amazon in some way, and infiltrate the board. The traitor on the board then hires a specific consulting firm, BCG, whose real goal is destruction. They implement a number of terrible policies, and charge outrageous prices for their services.

        This has been done to a number of American companies, including Sears, Toys R Us, and GameStop. Thanks to research by activist investors, parts of this strategy were uncovered last year and the short hedge funds' precarious position brought to light. Investors realized that shorts have unlimited risk: when betting a stock will go up, the worst that can happen is it goes to zero. But when betting it will go down, there is no limit to how high it could actually go. And shorts have to cover their positions in the end, unless the company goes bankrupt.

        The stock had a stunning rally, and the activist investors have been in a protracted battle with the short hedge funds since. The NFT marketplace idea was just hype, honestly, and now that the bottom has fallen out of the market, the idea seems stupid. The real "secret weapon" that gamestop plans to use to destroy the short hedge funds is an upcoming stock split. All stocks must be accounted for in a split, and shorts that have borrowed stocks must come up with new stocks to cover the split. Which is impossible, as the float is locked and has been for over 100 days now.

        The activist investors learned of a technique called direct registering shares. See, when you invest normally, brokers hold the shares for you. This is what lets you buy partial shares, for example. But it also means the broker can lend out your shares to shorts, without your consent. Short hedge funds use those borrowed shares to manipulate the price. But with DRS, the shares are moved to your personal account and the brokers can not lend them to the short hedge funds.

        Full disclosure: I have no money invested in this stock and have just been following it due to my interest in white collar crime. Do your own due diligence before investing in this or any other stock.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Deef ( 162646 )

          I think this article is a good read. It's a bit old, but it describes a lot of what has been going on:

          https://upsidechronicles.com/2... [upsidechronicles.com]

          The TLDR is that a lot of short sellers are still very much on the hook for the shares that they eventually owe to Gamestop retail investors (they "covered" but didn't "close" their short positions and instead hid them in swaps and other financial instruments so they wouldn't appear in reports), and those short sellers are very, very eager to pretend that this is not the cas

    • Re:Oh dear lord (Score:4, Funny)

      by vivian ( 156520 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @11:29PM (#62695314)

      Don't worry, next week they will open a tulip farm. That should sort them out.

    • You had a good run, but it's time to quit while you can still do it on your own terms.

      Firstly, what about their decline has been their own terms rather than a change in the underlying industry?
      Secondly, (NFT retardation aside) what part of a business decline means they can't change their business?

      Did you think Nintendo was the producer of video games and consoles when they were founded back in 1889? Did you think Nikon produced industrial lithography machines for manufacture of semiconductors back in 1948?

  • well that's gonna land with thud.

  • And in other NFT news.... (Score:3)

    by buss_error ( 142273 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @08:37PM (#62694972) Homepage Journal

    The local laundromat washing machines and dryers are launching an NFT block chain for all the single socks it's hidden from decades of users. Said the dry cleaning machine: "Yeah, and you thought the socks would stay on!"

    • The local laundromat washing machines and dryers are launching an NFT block chain for all the single socks it's hidden from decades of users.

      Be careful doing that. If such an action causes the Hozone, which physicists call the alternate universe containing centuries of single socks, to collapse and dump into ours, every city and town could be buried in a deep layer of unwashed socks. The odor alone might be fatal.

  • Oh you're serious let me laugh even harder.

    • Yeah, I almost spit water on my keyboard when I read that headline. But at least they're consistent in terms of jumping fearlessly onto the declining side of trends.

  • obligatory ape "buy GME / AMC!" chant here.

  • If everyone goes diamond hands and buys the Gamestop NFTs to hodl them, is there really a market or is it just sales?

    There is no market when its hodl em if you got em.

  • Give a mouse a cookie, it's going to demand a glass of milk.

  • When a company launches NFTs when just about everybody and their dog has finally realized the whole cryptocurrency thing is a scam for sucker - even the suckers - AND said scam is collapsing right and left, you know that company is desperate.

    That particular bandwagon has departed guys. Find another fad quick because that one sure won't save you.

    • I'd guess that this isn't a plan to prolong GameStop's life. After enough suckers have put their assets in GS' hands, GS will be "hacked" at about the same time as the management moves to a nice, sunny island.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Thud457 ( 234763 )
      hey, Long Island Iced Tea corp, err, Long Blockchain Corp made the switch five years ago and is doing just fine, err, OK. [barchart.com]

      • HInt: you need to look at the Max or at least 5 year option to see how gr-r-r-e-a-a-t it all is.

        Do they still make iced tea, or is it just blockchain goodness?

  • since everybody is throwing shade at this news.. if there's one area where tokenomics might work it might be in the gaming ecosystem. The ability to trade, sell, and own game items (weapons, trophies, powers, property) could be massive. It could inadvertently be the first global currency. If GameStop finds a way to get in the middle of that they're in a position to do amazingly well. Gaming is, after all, an enormous industry that moves around 10s of billions of dollars.
    • It is true, the games industry moves around billions of dollars every year, and they use dollars to do it, because dollars have an agreed upon value.
      People are making fun of this idea because it transparently stupid.

    • The ability to trade, sell, and own game items (weapons, trophies, powers, property) could be massive.

      This is the dumbest fucking use for a blockchain besides all of the other dumb uses. There is absolutely zero financial upside for a developer to support some in-game item purchased from another developer. It's all cost with no benefit. Epic isn't going to spend a dime to support a TF2 hat in Fortnite. Valve made the money from the sucke...customer, not Epic, which means Epic is out the cost to support the

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

      The gaming industry has ZERO use for NFTs. The ability to trade and sell in-game items already exists in the developer wants it to. MMOs usually internally tokenize items to uniquely identify them - how would an external blockchain improve this? Games on Steam can utilize the marketplace if they want. There is ZERO benefit to block-chaining it.

      Block-chain technology has absolutely zero practical, real-world, everyday uses.

      • "Block-chain technology has absolutely zero practical, real-world, everyday uses." I disagree, crapto is just like many other evil inventions and technologies that are too useful and lucrative to ever die. Like spam, voice-mail trees, pay toilets, balloons, fire works and the blink attribute. Granted, all the use cases are antisocial, evil, polluting and criminal. But much as I'd love to see it dead it's never going away. It's just too useful for computer ransomware, kidnapping ransom, child porn, gun, drug

        • Excellent screed. Please mod up.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

          Granted, all the use cases are antisocial, evil, polluting and criminal.

          in my opinion, means it's not practical, real-world, or everyday usage. There may be a handful of people that can sustain it, but it's not even practical for pretty much everything you mentioned because its traceable. I mean, it's what they're going to use, because they're less likely to get caught or at the very least delay their detection.

          And lastly, just because it qualifies as art, doesn't mean it has value. There exists objectively bad and worthless art, I don't care how much time was put into it. I do

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gmack ( 197796 )

      Even if all that where true (which I doubt) GameStop would still find a way to fail at it. Not only will they fail at it, they will fail in a way that pisses their own customers off.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ebcdic ( 39948 )
      Once you're using real money to buy and sell game items, it's not a game any more.

  • "Hey guys, to reinvent ourselves, let's take a shitty idea, combine it with another shitty idea, and then later, you guessed it, another shitty idea! What could possibly go wrong?"

    To clarify:
    NFTs = shitty
    marketplace for NFTs = shitty
    Web3 = shitty concept and doesn't actually exist

    • The Web3 scam marketing slogan is one that drives me crazy. Blockscamchains have nothing to do with the web.

  • The move is either massively naïve, or grossly irresponsible.

    As backup for my claim I refer you to https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ [web3isgoinggreat.com] , and any other article on Crypto and NFT from a reputable source.

    "You're either a grifter or a mark."

  • Step #1) Take your life savings and short GME stock.
    Step #2) Partner w/ a hacker on the dark web to shut down Gamestop's NFT marketplace.
    Step #3) ... (seriously, do nothing, just wait for the crash & burn)
    Step #4) Profit!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      Step #1) Take your life savings and short GME stock.
      Step #2) Partner w/ a hacker on the dark web to shut down Gamestop's NFT marketplace.
      Step #3) ... (seriously, do nothing, just wait for the crash & burn)
      Step #4) Profit!

      Go ahead. The reddidiots could fix you good. They can see shorts. That's what happened last time.

  • Just in time for a massive crypto crash and the realization that they and NFTs are just one scam stacked on top of another.

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