GameStop shares jump 26% in after-hours trade after NFT division unveiled

GameStop has reportedly hired 20 members for its new NFT division and is close to securing partnerships with two crypto firms for NFT game development.

The share price of Reddit’s cult-favorite stock GameStop Corporation (GME) jumped by one quarter in after-hours trading following a Wall Street Journal report on its upcoming nonfungible token (NFT) division.

The United States retail game store giant has been quietly working on an NFT marketplace since May and ramped things up in October by listing several job openings for Web3 and NFT-experienced software engineers and product marketers.

According to a Thursday report from The Wall Street Journal, GameStop has now hired more than 20 people to operate its freshly minted NFT unit.

An unnamed source familiar with GameStop’s plans told the outlet that the unit is building an NFT platform that enables the buying, selling and trading of gaming NFTs, along with establishing key cryptocurrency partnerships.

The marketplace is slated to launch later this year, and the firm is said to be close to penning partnerships with two crypto companies that will share technology and co-invest in the development of blockchain and NFT games, along with other additional NFT projects.

The news was warmly welcomed by after-hour traders who drove the price of GME up 26% since the market closed to sit at $162.48 at the time of writing, according to TradingView. After-hours trading is often quite volatile due to a lack of liquidity in the market but impacts the price of a stock in a similar way to regular trading.

However, The Wall Street Journal’s lack of named sources or direct confirmation from GameStop has raised the eyebrows of some more conspiratorially minded GME fanatics. In a post that has 1,100 comments and a 97% upvote ratio on the r/Superstonk Reddit community, user u/brettmagnetic questioned whether The Wall Street Journal article could actually have that much of a bullish effect on after-hours GME trading.

“Sorry, but I don’t believe the movement in price after hours has to do with the WSJ posting about the Gamestop NFT market. I think something else is happening and this article was put out to give the NFT market as the scapegoat for the price increase.”

Redditor u/MrFlags69 echoed similar sentiments, arguing, “The author credited ‘the people’ as the only source I saw. This is anything but journalism.”

Neither GameStop nor RC said shit today. WSJ is not on GameStop's side. I'm not convinced that the AH bump was due to news about an NFT marketplace but rather a cover story for something going on BTS like forced FTD covering or margin calls. In any case, I buy and hold. pic.twitter.com/jDQFtTYIBr

— ssddman.eth (@0xssddman) January 6, 2022