Doug Goodwille from Kayne Anderson speaks to Drew Meredith from The Inside Network on market thinkers.
While a surging gold price is on hold as the world adjusts to a Trump presidency, all the factors that saw its price rise more than 50 per during his first term in office – trade disputes, fiscal deficits and geopolitical tensions – are almost certainly guaranteed the second time around.
Greatest “meme stock” pivots into NFT world
GameStop Corp (NYSE:GME) – GameStop is back. The US video game, consumer electronics, and gaming retailer has unveiled a new partnership with blockchain-based non-fungible token (NFT) platform, Sydney, Australia-based Immutable X (Ethereum token), in a move to expand into the NFT ecosystem. GME shares rose 3 per cent on the day.
It seems GameStop is looking to launch into the NFT marketplace to take advantage of the booming market and complement its digital pivot into e-commerce. And it makes sense. The company is dedicated to creating content from gaming studios, and as such has also announced a $100 million fund in Immutable X’s IMX tokens to support creators of NFT content “Web3” and metaverse gaming.
“The partnership establishes an up to $100 million fund in Immutable X’s IMX tokens, which the parties intend to use for grants to creators of non-fungible token (NFT) content and technology. Immutable X will also become a layer-2 partner and platform for GameStop and the company’s NFT marketplace that is expected to launch later this year,” the announcement reads.
The market for NFTs is pushing past US$25 billion ($35.2 billion) in sales in 2021 up from $94.9 million the year before. Immutable has created Immutable X, a Layer-2 scalability protocol for NFTs on Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain network. This means it enables transactions at a much faster rate compared to Ethereum, requires low computing power, and has lower environmental impact.
This has been one of the biggest announcements GameStop has made since it announced its plans to enter the NFT and metaverse world earlier in January. The switch into NFTs was made when it employed roughly 20 veterans to run the newly formed division.
