So, today has been an incredible day so far! I got stuck at a light while driving to work this morning and pulled up Reddit on my phone and saw multiple posts with the NFT partnership announcement all over the place. It took every bit of self control to put my phone back up while I finished my drive, but needless to say, I haven’t done shit all day except read through the agreement and the various posts on Reddit trying to figure out the implications of this announcement.
There has been a lot of speculation on what the NFT announcement would be when it finally happened, and I don’t think many people had even heard of Immutable X before today. We’ve all been focused on Loopring and haven’t been thinking that they would announce another partnership first. The best part of all this is that we also get some nice confirmation that they are working with Loopring as well if you read further down in the document. I won’t rehash that part any more than it has already been discussed in other posts.
The part that stuck out to me is that this partnership with Immutable X is not a direct agreement with GameStop Corp. (the parent company whose shares we all own) but rather a license agreement with “GME Entertainment, LLC”.
Now, GME Entertainment, LLC is not a new company or a new name, as they have had this name registered for several years. It seems that the whole NFT division that GameStop has been forming within their company has been doing business under the GME Entertainment name this whole time. So, what’s the big deal? There is a juicy line in the agreement on page 3 that caught my eye…
“To the extent any change of control occurs (for GME Entertainment, LLC) that results in Licensee no longer being a wholly-owned subsidiary of a publicly traded U.S. company”
Uh, but why would that happen? Now, I’m not a lawyer (just a retarded engineer) and this may be absolutely normal legal language, but it seems like an interesting thing to slip in there with everything else in this section.
There have been a few theories on what GameStop might one day do in order to help protect the financial interests of its investors, especially once the topic of NFTs and Blockchain came about.
- GameStop could issue an NFT dividend (similar to Overstock) and use it’s non-fungible qualities to force shorts and synthetic shares to close out their positions since they cannot use cash as an equivalent dividend to issue to shareholders who are holding synthetics.
- GameStop could recall it’s shares and remove them from the DTCC and reissue them as tokens on the blockchain. This would have the same affect as the NFT dividend, but would result in all sorts of lawsuits and is probably not in the best interest of the company. The language is there in their 10-K filings, though, to go down a path where they pull their shares.
But here’s my favorite one:
- GameStop could split off the NFT division of it’s company into a new company. The new company would not have to issue shares on the NYSE, but instead could be publicly tradable on the blockchain using NFT tokens (since this is a main part of it’s business model). Initial ownership could be distributed to existing shareowners of GME stock via NFT tokens.
There it is…the nuclear option. The NFT Marketplace will be a living and breathing entity that will require it’s own set of leadership to oversee. It’s completely different than the current GameStop Corp business model, so it would make total sense to split it off into it’s own thing. Shareholders would be screwed over if they split it off and did an IPO, so you would give existing shareholders shares in the new company and by doing it as an NFT token, Hedgies would be fuk’d.
But where does Loopring fit into this?
Right now, we’ve seen an announcement of partnering with Immutable, who specializes in gaming NFTs. So, game development, buying/selling of used games, in-game item marketplaces, the metaverse, etc. would all fit in nicely with this group. Loopring, on the other hand, has been putting out a lot of information hinting at changing up the financial system. What if Loopring’s partnership with GameStop is more focused on the financial system use for NFTs. Like…say…the first company to issue its shares as NFT tokens on a new blockchain run stock exchange?
This is all pure speculation, but as the pieces start to come together and we are finally getting real information from GameStop directly, I personally am even more bullish on this stock now than ever before!
I will leave you with one more nugget from the agreement.
GME Entertainment, LLC is contractually required to prohibit market manipulation on its new NFT marketplace. No more pump and dumps. No more married calls/puts and phantom shares. Nope. A fair and equal exchange of goods and services.
Personally, there’s no one else I’d trust to protect me from market manipulation than GameStop and Ryan Cohen.
Buckle the fuck up, apes!