Memestocks and memecoins make world news again
Last Updated on 17 May 2024 by CryptoTips.eu
After ‘Roaring Kitty’ suddenly returned to his Twitter (now X) account earlier this week, the stock price of GameStop rose spectacularly (at first). In the wake of this ultimate ‘meme stock’, several memecoins followed suit, with big leaps forward for Dogecoin and Pepe on the same day.
Memestocks and memecoins are suddenly making headlines again, just like in 2021. The question is whether they will go down in the same way. Classic media is very, very afraid.
Keith Gill
The return of Keith Gill (aka Roaring Kitty), on X earlier this week, was accompanied by an incredible rally for his favorite stock, GameStop. It is the first time since his return to X that he has mentioned a company by name.
Gill was the man who engineered the 2021 GameStop short squeeze and developed the underlying theory for it.
GameStop’s shares more than doubled after ‘Roaring Kitty,’ a former marketer at an insurance firm credited with sparking the 2021 meme stock rally, returned to X after a three-year social media hiatus https://t.co/LlQOoPJxM0 pic.twitter.com/9mMiG3A4VI
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 14, 2024
As a reminder, in 2021 some investment funds had pushed for a decline in the price of GameStop by ‘shorting’ the stock. Gill had figured out that if enough people bought the stock, the short sellers would be forced to cover their positions. This is called a ‘Short Squeeze’.
A group of investors on Reddit, communicating with each other through memes on the WallStreetBets forum, liked Gill’s theory and did so. GameStop rose by hundreds of percentages in a week. Wall Street’s hedge funds lost billions.
The 2021 GameStop short squeeze was legendary and happened just before Dogecoin’s major bull run (from 6 cents to 75 cents).
'Roaring Kitty' is back. Since he tweeted on Sunday, GameStop and other meme stocks (AMC, BlackBerry, et al) have gone bananas. What happened? https://t.co/rnzZK93bmK pic.twitter.com/Ioqs7wvCrS
— Financial Times (@FT) May 14, 2024
Dogecoin and Pepe
That’s partly why we saw strong increases in memecoins such as Dogecoin and Pepe this week.
After a wild two-day run, the meme-stock rally is sputtering https://t.co/rDEoL5XYye
— WSJ Markets (@WSJmarkets) May 15, 2024
However, traditional media are not really happy with this renewed attention for memestocks and memecoins and hope that the enthusiasm will fizzle out quickly. Reuters, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal all wrote about GameStop, AMC and Dogecoin this week. According to CNN, this could even be the start of ‘meme mania 2.0’.
Gamestop’s stock value took a 30% hit yesterday though. CNN might have gone a bit too fast I guess.