Cast your mind back to July 2022. It was around the time the marketplace for NFTs was collapsing, and crypto scams were falling apart everywhere you looked. That was when GameStop declared its intention to get into all that cool web 3.0 stuff. Well, you’re never going to believe it, but it hasn’t worked out so well. In an update just posted to its NFT site, the company declares that it’s all going to be wound down.
It’s shocking stuff. Who could have accurately predicted it in every detail on vaguely hearing about it when it was launching? Well, probably not all those people who devolved a meme into a religion, genuinely believing that GameStop’s ongoing failure to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of physical media was evidence of its unquestionable success. Pour one out for them, as GameStop declares the “continuing regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space” means it’s time to abandon the future of jpeg trading.
That’s genuinely the reason given. The full “Important Update” reads,
GameStop has decided to wind down our NFT marketplace due to the continuing regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space.
Effective as of February 2, 2024, customers will no longer be able to buy, sell or create NFTs. Your NFTs are on the blockchain and will remain accessible and saleable through other platforms.
Yup, all those gifs of moving shapes you could have invested in are about to no longer be GameStop’s problem. Yup, this $253.83 two-frame animation of a pixel eyeball will have to be bought somewhere else. The regulation is just too uncertain for GameStop to handle.
At least it all went really well for that year-and-a-half though.
Funnily enough, it was also “regulatory uncertainty” that saw GameStop closing down its crypto wallets last August.
The company now seems to have entirely extricated itself from the crypto nonsense, presumably hunting around for the next meme-y idea to latch onto for another memestock hike.
