Friday, January 07, 2022
The next hype is here
Gamestop course is going through the roof
Gamestop is said to be building an online marketplace to sell non-fungible tokens. It is said that the core business of video games should finally achieve the turnaround in earnings. Shortly afterwards, gamestop shares are eagerly gambled on the stock exchange.
The shares of the US video game retailer Gamestop jump after a media report about the company’s entry into the NFT market in after-hours trading. The “Wall Street Journal” writes that, as part of its restructuring, Gamestop intends to launch a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and enter into partnerships in the field of digital currencies, with the help of which the core video games business should turn around earnings. Avatar outfits and weapons are to be offered in digitized form.
In addition, Gamestop is negotiating with two crypto companies about sharing technology and investing in the development of games based on blockchain and NFT technology, it said. Other NFT projects are also being discussed.
NFTs are digital codes that refer to tangible objects or virtual goods. It is not about the rights to photos or videos that can be seen: these are subject to copyright and are not part of a non-fungible token. Rather, an NFT is a digital image that is based on blockchain technology and is therefore forgery-proof. Thanks to this data chain, it has been proven that you are the sole owner of this code. Depending on what the NFT is referring to in the real world, the greater its importance.
NFTs also play a role in the gaming scene, for example when swords and shields are provided with this digital reference in role-playing games and thus make them unique – the player then knows that he is always using the same video game weapon and not just any weapon of the same type .
Hedge funds suffered losses
Gamestop is one of the so-called meme stocks, the prices of which were at times driven up sharply in the past year when users of platforms such as Reddit made massive calls to buy. In doing so, they got into trouble hedge funds that were betting on falling prices.
The retailer, which specializes in video games, has been making losses for years and is now banking on the trend with digital certificates of authenticity. To put it into perspective: The sale of the NFT of the first tweet from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey brought in 2.9 million dollars (2.5 million euros) this spring. In the summer, the first source code for the World Wide Web (WWW) by Tim Berners-Lee was sold as NFT for 5.4 million dollars. The programmer Neil Papworth, who works for Vodafone, sent the short message in December 1992 to a colleague who was at the company’s Christmas party. Its content: “Merry Christmas”.