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What GameStop’s 70% rise means for cryptocurrencies – DL News
- GameStop was up more than 70% on Monday.
- Some cryptocurrency traders believe it is a sign that retail participants are ready to enter the markets again.
- Others, however, fear that attention could shift from cryptocurrencies to stocks.
It’s happening again. GameStop shares surged 73% on Monday, trading at prices not seen since November 2022.
Stocks skyrocketed thanks to a meme published by Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, the trader-turned-folk-hero who sparked the previous GameStop trading mania in early 2021.
And the video game company isn’t alone. Shares of movie theater chain AMC rose 48%.
Which begs the question: are meme stocks back? GameStop’s new rise is a sign that retail participants are paying attention to the markets again and may be switching to cryptocurrencies very soon.
“The last time GameStop topped out after its giga rally, Dogecoin rose 100x in three months,” cryptocurrency trader Zion Thomas wrote on X.
Better known as Ansem, Thomas is credited with reporting smart calls to 400,000 followers. Notably, he touted Solana during his 2022 lows and dogwifhat in his early days. Both have soared since then.
“Cryptocurrencies have been lacking new retail traders all along the way,” said Quinn Thompson, founder of crypto hedge fund Lekker Capital DL News.
The trauma from the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the “overall brutality” of the previous recession are usually blamed for the lack of retail participation, Thompson said.
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“It makes sense for crypto memes to capture hopes” that retail is coming back, Thompson added, though he cautioned that it’s too early to tell whether this attention will last.
But not everyone is bullish. Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of cryptocurrency marketplace maker Wintermute, wrote that cryptocurrencies may actually suffer from the rise of GameStop.
“The return of Roaring Kitty is bearish for cryptocurrencies (shift focus), no?” He published.
Regardless of whether retail participants return to cryptocurrencies in the long term or not, memecoin traders are taking advantage of the hype. At least five memecoins named after GameStop, AMC and Gill have launched since Gill posted the meme of her 18 hours ago.
Tom Carreras is a markets correspondent at DL News. Do you have a tip on GameStop and cryptocurrencies? Contact tcarreras@dlnews.com