What’s more grim? That GameStop slashed headcount to cut costs right before launching an NFT marketplace, or that the NFT marketplace which the company spent millions on earned only an estimated $US44,500 (around $AU65,849) on its big debut? For those keeping score at home, that’s less than the price of a new truck.
GameStop’s new crypto-based store shows rolling stats for NFT sales and has been transparent about charging a 2.25% total commission. While we don’t know the total overhead or initial investment, that’s enough info to get a rough idea of how much the store is earning each day, and so far it’s hardly anything. As Ars Technica reports, the first day’s sales totaled 1,835 Ethereum, or about $US1.98 ($AU2.98) million in actual money. That translates to $US44,500 ($AU65,849) in estimated commissions for GameStop, or roughly 0.27 per cent of its daily net sales in 2021.
To take the calculation a bit further, GameStop had 4,816 stores worldwide at the start of 2021. Dividing the daily net sales by that number means roughly $US3,426 ($AU5,069) in business at each store each day. Opening the NFT marketplace was effectively like opening a dozen more GameStop stores, though with the bonus of not having to actually hire any poorly paid hourly workers.
As the marketplace nears completion of its second day in action, there’s only been an estimated $US823,484 ($AU1,218,558) in additional sales volume, or roughly $US18,578 ($27,490) in additional commissions. While it’s too early to say if things are already slowing down following the first day’s rush, they certainly don’t seem to be speeding up. As Ars Technica points out, the NFT market in general fell dramatically over the past six months, with daily sales volume on established platforms like OpenSea falling 90%.
But GameStop meme stock enthusiasts only see the upside, and are already talking about the potential for exponential growth and lucrative new fee structures attached to GameStop’s proprietary NFT wallet. Others have become obsessed with Easter eggs embedded in one of GameStop’s own NFTs.
A not-for-sale NFT commemorating the launch begins with a loading screen that eventually changes to an arcade cabinet. GameStonks aficionados found a reference to a secret file in the metadata, and discovered that inputting the classic Konami cheat code would lead to a rocket ship animation and later an ASCII skull. This rabbit hole currently has them parsing a photograph of a rug. Naturally, GameStop’s share price is up 10% this week.
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