REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
- GameStop stock has risen 22% so far this week amid rumors about a partnership with Loopring.
- Loopring's token, which is based on ethereum layer 2 protocol, has soared more than 200%.
- GameStop has been working on plans to launch an NFT platform to get into the digital space.
GameStop stock has gained 22% in three days of trading this week as Redditors cheer rumors that the company could be partnering with an ethereum-based crypto for its NFT project.
Thousands of Redditors upvoted posts from late last week that claimed loopring, which creates a layer 2 ethereum-based token, is behind GameStop's upcoming nonfungible token efforts.
Meanwhile, Loopring's token price has soared alongside the Reddit rumors as well as movement to ethereum's cheaper layer 2 protocols, Coindesk reported. The price of the token has risen 246% in the past seven days to $1.39, according to CoinMarketCap data.
The rumors were stoked when GMEdd.com, a site run by retail traders who say they're the "OG long investors in GameStop," said it found code on Loopring's Github that revealed links to GameStop and an NFT feature.
"Loopring's public GitHub repository has leaked code confirming GameStop's highly speculated partnership with the Ethereum Layer 2 scaling protocol," the GMEdd story read.
The Reddit crowd caught wind of the rumors too. "Loopring leaked GameStop's NFT last night," wrote one Redditor who got 11,000 upvotes.
GameStop and Loopring did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on the rumored partnership.
For now, GameStop hasn't revealed much about its NFT project. In May, GameStop launched a website called GameStop NFT, in which it indicated it was looking to hire a team to build out a platform for the digital-asset space.
The month prior, Matthew Finestone, who was once the head of business at Loopring, left to become the head of blockchain at GameStop, GMEdd first pointed out, citing his LinkedIn profile. Finestone did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Then last week, GameStop posted a slew of jobs related to NFTs and what's known as Web3.
A spattering of mysterious tweets from heads of the companies also has coincided with the partnership rumors. Loopring founder and CEO Daniel Wang tweeted a Chinese poem, which seems to be a coming trend as Tesla's Elon Musk recently did the same. The poem, some guessed, could mean Loopring has long been waiting to reveal GameStop's NFT project, though Loopring didn't provide any clarity on the cryptic tweet.
And Ryan Cohen, the new board chairman at GameStop who is aiming to turn the retailer into the Amazon of gaming, has had a couple cryptic tweets himself. In one, he tweeted MGGA, possibly translating to "Make GameStop Great Again," a twist on Donald Trump's well-known "MAGA" slogan. He also tweeted a photo of a child pushing against a sumo wrestler.