Is the meme stock craze back? GameStop’s share price doubled from Friday’s close to Monday’s open, with trading of GME paused nine times already due to volatility. And a GameStop-themed meme coin on Solana is reaping the rewards, too.
The “GameStop” token on Solana, which also uses the GME ticker, has seen a 1,900% price jump over the past 24 hours, per data from DexScreener, to a current price of approximately $0.01. That gives GME a current market cap of $68 million.
GME on Solana, which is an unofficial meme coin created as a tribute to the company, was launched in January shortly after the gaming retailer announced that it would withdraw from the crypto world, shutting down its NFT marketplace that launched back in 2022.
Like most meme coins, GME had a short and extremely volatile moment in the spotlight. Meme coins are often created based on internet memes and pop culture trends, but they’re also often created by anonymous developers—and may be “rug pulled,” or have the liquidity drained, leaving buyers with a near-worthless token.
The GME token rose to a high price of $0.0135 in early February, and swung up and down for weeks before eventually losing steam and sinking lower and lower. GME had barely budged in price for weeks, and was trading for about $0.0005 just before the latest surge.
The unofficial GameStop token still remains about 26% down from its all-time high price, but is closer to that mark than it’s been in three months. And the 24-hour jump of about 1,900% is vastly higher than that of the actual GameStop stock price.
— Roaring Kitty (@TheRoaringKitty) May 13, 2024
Stock trader Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty and DeepFuckingValue, helped drive an enormous surge in the price of GameStop’s shares in early 2021 via Reddit posts and livestreams, encouraging traders to purchase and hold the diminished shares of the retail giant. The trend then spread to other nostalgic, beleaguered brands, like movie theater chain AMC.
The original craze eventually died down, but a revival appears to be in the offing following a Twitter (aka X) post from Gill on Sunday—the first in nearly three years. GME more than doubled from its close price on Friday, while AMC jumped 37%. Adjacent stocks like Reddit (up 9%) and Robinhood (up 6%) are also rising alongside them.