The pendulum of history has swung resoundingly to “it's over” from any semblance of “we're so back” for struggling retailer GameStop after its experiments with cryptocurrencies and a brief moment in the sun as a kind of Reddit meme thing. As reported by Decrypt, the company announced that its NFT marketplace will be shutting down on February 2.
The market was updated with a notice to this effect, citing “continued regulatory uncertainty in the cryptocurrency space,” the same wording that GameStop provided when it announced the end of its cryptocurrency portfolio. While users will no longer be able to buy, sell or create on the platform, any assets they own will remain available on the blockchain via other platforms.
Like many retailers, GameStop has struggled with e-commerce and digital distribution, though it still retains a strong nostalgic appeal for many gamers. In 2021, we saw the bizarre saga of its stock price reach the stratosphere by small traders organized through Reddit. Although the story was made into a movie with a bafflingly excellent cast, the good times did not continue for GameStop or many of these amateur traders.
GameStop has joined a wave of companies and individual celebrities trying to cash in on the peak of 2021 and the NFT craze of '22, which now feels like it happened in a different century. However, the company continued to lose revenue, and in June last year CEO Matthew Furlong was terminated. Although GameStop cited regulatory uncertainty in withdrawing from the space, it's not even clear that anyone cares enough to regulate cryptocurrencies anymore.
The failure of many so-called stablecoins, the bankruptcy of FTX and the highly publicized trial of its founder, Sam Bankman Fried, as well as the general collapse in the value of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have led to potentially irreversible damage to the technology's reputation. Besides, we're betting our future and the entire economy on AI now, grandpa.
