It’s happening again. GameStop shares are up 73% Monday, trading at prices unseen since November 2022.
The stock soared off the back of a meme posted by Keith Gill, alias Roaring Kitty, the trader-turned-folk-hero who triggered GameStop’s previous trading mania in the early months of 2021.
And the video-game company isn’t alone. Shares for movie-theater chain AMC have surged 48%.
Which begs the question: Are meme stocks back? GameStop’s new rise is a sign that retail participants are paying attention to markets again — and that they could rotate into crypto quite soon.
“The last time GameStop topped after its giga rally, Dogecoin 100x’d in three months,” crypto trader Zion Thomas wrote on X.
Better known as Ansem, Thomas is credited with flagging smart calls to 400,000 followers. He notably touted Solana during its 2022 lows as well as dogwifhat during its early days. Both have soared since.
“Crypto has been lacking new retail entrants this whole way up,” Quinn Thompson, founder of crypto hedge fund Lekker Capital, told DL News.
Trauma from crypto exchange FTX’s collapse and the “general brutality” of the previous downturn are usually blamed for the lack of retail participation, Thompson said.
“It makes sense for crypto memes to catch a bid on hopes” that retail is coming back, Thompson added, though he warned it is too early to tell whether this attention will last.
But not everyone is bullish. Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of crypto market maker Wintermute, wrote that crypto could actually suffer from GameStop’s rise.
“Roaring Kitty coming back is bearish for crypto (shifting attention) no?” he posted.
Whether retail participants come back to crypto 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 his meme, 18 hours ago.
Tom Carreras is a markets correspondent at DL News. Got a tip about GameStop and crypto? Reach out at tcarreras@dlnews.com