GameStop becomes surprise new player in bitcoin gold rush

GameStop – ostensibly an electronics retailer – had just bought 4,710 bitcoin worth roughly $513m (£380m) at current prices. The company shot to fame in 2021 as a “meme stock” after Reddit traders sent its share price soaring by 2,000%. But even by GameStop’s unpredictable standards, the move into crypto caught many in the traditional finance world by surprise.

At Bitcoin 2025, however, GameStop’s news went down a storm. At an expo hall in the Venetian hotel, in the heart of the US casino capital, crowds of crypto enthusiasts in bright orange cowboy hats hailed bitcoin’s political coming of age.

To whoops, the US vice-president, JD Vance, assured the crowd: “Crypto and digital assets, and particularly bitcoin, are part of the mainstream economy and are here to stay”. He urged Congress to pass the Senate bill labelled the “Genius Act” to endorse stablecoins, a form of cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar. At the same conference, Donald Trump’s son Eric backed crypto against Wall Street. He said: “I hate using the word hate, but honestly, I would love to see some of the big banks go extinct.”

GameStop’s chief executive, Ryan Cohen, said the company turned to bitcoin as protection against economic instability. “Bitcoin… can be a hedge against global currency devaluation and systemic risk,” he said at the conference.

But Geoff Kendrick, who leads digital assets research at Standard Chartered bank, said that his real motivation may be simpler: profit.

Last week, a wave of entrepreneurs promised to turn failing publicly traded companies into glorified crypto treasuries. Trump Media & Technology Group, which is behind the loss-making social media app Truth Social and controlled by the US president’s family, said it plans to raise $2.5bn to buy cryptocurrencies.

Meanwhile, Strive Asset Management, run by entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, said it had raised $750m to target struggling biotech companies. According to a presentation, the asset manager will buy up businesses that have faced “clinical, regulatory or commercial setbacks” at discounted prices, and then use those companies’ cash reserves to buy bitcoin.

All these companies appear to be following in the footsteps of Strategy, formerly called MicroStrategy, a floundering data firm whose pivot to crypto turned its fortunes around.

Founded in the 1989 as a business intelligence service, in 2020 it began to invest heavily in bitcoin. Five years on, Strategy is the world’s largest corporate holder of bitcoin, with 580,250 – worth $63bn today.

Strategy is now a business intelligence company in name only. In reality, it functions as a proxy for bitcoin investment – its share price often moves in tandem with the price of the cryptocurrency. Rather than buying into bitcoin directly, investors buy shares in Strategy and, as a result, gain indirect exposure to the cryptocurrency. The more investors Strategy has, the more bitcoin it can buy – and so the cycle repeats.

But here’s the twist: Strategy’s overall market cap is about one and a half times the value of the bitcoins it holds. Co-founder Michael Saylor has realised that the US public stock market will pay $1.5 or more for $1 of crypto – and his business takes advantage of the difference.

Today, Strategy’s market cap is more than $100bn, up from just under a $1bn in 2020. Saylor has become a cult figure, posting weekly AI-generated photographs of himself to his 4.4 million followers on X, hyping bitcoin as the reserve currency of the future. In one, he stands in front of a private jet: “Bitcoin is taking off.” In another, he is dressed as a 17th-century Dutch golden age merchant: “Tulip season ends. Bitcoin is forever.”

There are several reasons why some investors prefer buying shares in Strategy to holding the cryptocurrency directly. Unlike bitcoin, Strategy trades as a public security, which comes with regulatory protections and easier integration into institutional portfolios.

“ To some degree, you’re paying for a premium of not being in the unregulated, scary market of bitcoin,” said Corey Frayer, a crypto policy expert and an official at the US securities regulator under Joe Biden. Then there is access. While bitcoin exchange-traded funds now trade on the US stock exchange, regulation elsewhere – including the UK – makes buying and holding bitcoin more difficult. “The average investor is underinvested in what, in my mind, is now a totally legitimate asset,” said Kendrick. “So if local regulators, like the UK ones, won’t give access… there’s rationale for people to go for these alternatives.”

It is a market hack that has inspired “a number of MicroStrategy imitators”, said Kendrick.

As of last week, 114 publicly traded companies are holding bitcoin. Not all are Strategy copycats: about a dozen are bitcoin miners and crypto exchanges. The others – including Tesla, which holds nearly $1.2bn of bitcoin – are seeking to maximise returns on cash not needed for daily operations.

GameStop’s chief executive dismisses any comparison to Strategy. “GameStop is following GameStop’s strategy,” he said at Bitcoin 2025.

“Strategy will retain a first-mover advantage,” said Frayer, who anticipates rival companies might “diversify into other crypto assets” to market themselves as a different offering to Strategy.

For companies such as GameStop, however, the risk “is clearly much higher”, said Kendrick.

Is this a legitimate enterprise? “ At some point – no, it’s not,” said Kendrick. “ But when that point is, I guess it’s difficult to say.”

As for Trump Media’s venture, the calculation is different. “The president has the ability and the incentive to be extremely lightly regulated and forgiving of his business enterprises,” said Frayer. It is unlikely Trump Media will be held to any auditing or enforcement standards. “It’s a recipe for absolute disaster,” he added.

Photograph by Getty

• This article was amended on 2 June 2025. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the amount of bitcoin held by Tesla was $2bn. This should read $1.2bn.