If you’ve been following the news at all over the past week, you know of the story of GameStop.
The GameStop stock, which trades under the ticker GME, has undergone an extreme rally of over 1,000 percent in the past two weeks, which is somewhat of an unforeseen event in financial markets.
The long and short of it is that Wall Street fund managers and investors were short the brick-and-mortar video game company, though smaller investors who have been rallying on the subreddit Wall Street Bets have managed to squeeze out these holders, causing literal billions in losses.
Nothing really has changed about the GameStop business, so many see this as more of a statement by smaller investors than anything.
As this story has become widespread, crypto investors have taken notice. They see it as somewhat of an endorsement of the Bitcoin space, especially decentralized finance.
DeFi validated by the GameStop short squeeze
Michael Novogratz, the founder of Galaxy Digital, says that the GameStop short squeeze by retail investors against Wall Street is a sign that DeFi has value:
“1) This GME squeeze is deeper than a squeeze. its a large group of people saying they don’t want Citadel preying on their orders from RH, they don’t want IPO’s being allocated to insiders, they don’t like a system geared to the already rich.This is a giant endorsement of DEFI.”
He elaborated that this short squeeze goes much beyond just a financial event, touching on how there has been a concerted effort amongst smaller investors and individuals to usurp establishment entities over the past few years.
1)This GME squeeze is deeper than a squeeze. its a large group of people saying they don’t want Citadel preying on their orders from RH, they don’t want IPO’s being allocated to insiders, they don’t like a system geared to the already rich.This is a giant endorsement of DEFI.
— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) January 27, 2021
Qiao Wang, a prominent DeFi investor and innovator, also echoed the sentiment first shared by Novogratz.
He shared that this a good sign that investors should be “long uncensorable securities trading platforms.”
He specifically named Synthetix and Mirror, both of which are protocols that allow any users to obtain synthetic exposure to a variety of assets without having to pass through KYC regulations or anything along those lines.
Long uncensorable securities trading platforms.$SNX $MIR SEND IT. https://t.co/1iPmp3x6q9
— Qiao Wang (@QwQiao) January 27, 2021
Of note, key players in the DeFi market are up in the past 24 hours despite weakness in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Disclaimer: This author is an analyst at ParaFi Capital. ParaFi Capital may hold positions in assets mentioned in this article. The views displayed in this article are opinions of the author—and the author only.
