The announcement boosted GameStop’s stock value.

Ever since the infamous short squeeze last year, video game retailer GameStop has become something of a symbol for emerging financial trends, particularly “meme” investments. This popularity has helped GameStop’s bottom line somewhat, though their actual in-store sales haven’t picked up much steam. As such, GameStop has decided to leverage their popularity and branch their business in a new direction: NFTs and crypto.

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that GameStop will be creating their own marketplace for trading non-fungible tokens, better known as NFTs. This may prove to be a smart financial move for GameStop, as there is a good amount of overlap between those who are interested in meme investments and those who are interested in NFTs. Indeed, the mere announcement that GameStop is planning such a thing gave their stock values another shot in the arm; following the announcement on Thursday, GameStop’s values increased by 22%, though it’s still down by 59% compared to its high during the short squeeze in January of last year.

GameStop to enter NFT, crypto markets as part of turnaround plan – WSJ https://t.co/W1y8YJ0P0B pic.twitter.com/fOIkGaZZkH

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 6, 2022

As for what this marketplace will actually entail, GameStop is planning on incorporating NFTs into their existing merchandise framework, i.e. video games. GameStop is planning on selling both NFT-centric games and NFT items for existing games, such as cosmetics and collectibles.