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GameStop might be dying, but thanks to its unprecedented good fortunes as a meme stock, it still has a whopping $4 billion in cash reserves. The video game retail chain announced this week it now has a plan for what to do with it: plough it into Bitcoin.
“GameStop today announced that its board has unanimously approved an update to its investment policy to add Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset,” the company wrote in a press release published on March 25. “We have not set a maximum amount of bitcoin we may accumulate, and may sell any bitcoin we may acquire,” it added in a subsequent SEC filing. The crypto currency is currently trading at $87,392, just off its historic $105,000 peak set back in January.
The news came alongside another announcement: GameStop plans to shut down a “significant number” of additional stores. That’s on top of the 1,000 it already closed in the last 12 months, including over 500 in the U.S. alone. That will put it at less than half of its 6,000-store peak a decade ago, CNN reports. The result has been ongoing layoffs and the end of dedicated gaming stores in some communities.
Various subreddits have been full of long-time gamers pouring one out for their local GameStop once it shuts its doors. Some collectors have managed to salvage displays and other memorabilia, while remaining GameStop store clerks exchange advice on how to know if their store is about to be next on the termination list. “You should be receiving multiple cases of boxes,” one employee wrote. “They are not SFS boxes. The boxes you receive are boxes sent out for closure kits. You will know the difference.”
Despite its pandemic-era meme stock windfall, which has been documented ad nauseum at this point, including in major motion pictures, GameStop has struggled to reinvent itself. Various initiatives around pivoting to branded PC gaming equipment. rapid in-home deliveries, and NFTs all petered out. All the while, T-shirts and toys, including Funko Pop!, have taken up more and more shelf space away from what hardcore fans, who still prefer physical games, actually visit the stores to buy.
More recently, GameStop has gone all in on Pokémon cards, including grading and trade-ins for the rarest ones. Becoming a cash pawnshop for trading cards seemed like a strange strategy when it was announced last year, but it’s no worse than becoming a crypto trading piggy bank that also happens to sell Dragon Ball Z statues.
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