Shares of GameStop (GME), an American retail chain selling video game consoles, computer games and gaming accessories, fell by 22% following the results of the trading session on March 27. This happened against the background of the announcement of plans to add bitcoin as a backup corporate asset.

Although information that GameStop was considering investing in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies appeared as early as February 2025, it was not until March 25 that the company's board of directors approved this initiative. By March 26, this led to a rise in GM's share price of about 12%, to $28.36, according to TradingView. After that, the company put forward a specific investment plan by raising borrowed funds.

On March 26, GameStop offered $1.3 billion in convertible bonds, a type of debt that can later be converted into shares without any interest payments. However, with the ability to convert these debt securities into ordinary shares at a price of $29.85 per share no earlier than 2028. According to The Block, these bonds will be redeemed in 2030 and will be available only to large institutional investors.

The company also gives interested parties the opportunity to purchase additional bonds worth up to $200 million within 13 days of the initial sale. GameStop plans to use part of the proceeds from the sale of these debt securities to purchase bitcoin.

After this news, following the results of the trading session on March 27, shares fell by about 22%, to $22.09 per GME share. The price of bitcoin also dropped to about $85,000, which is a 3% drop over the past day, according to Coinmarketcap data on March 28.

"The risk in all of this is intention. GameStop has been a largely unprofitable company for many years. Take a mediocre business, release debt to buy bitcoins, and pray that the price rises," Nathan Cox, IT director at Two Prime Digital Assets, is quoted as saying by TheBlock.

The fundraising scheme is similar to the approach of the largest corporate bitcoin holder, Strategy, founded by Michael Saylor. Since 2020, the organization has been able to accumulate about 506,000 coins of the main cryptocurrency, or more than $43 billion at an average price of about $66,632 per coin. The decision to accumulate bitcoins led to an increase in Strategy's quotes: over the past five years, they have added 3,000%.

"Welcome to the Bitcoin team," wrote the founder of Strategy on March 26, posting a photo with GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen.

In addition to Strategy, several other companies use this type of capital raising scheme. For example, the Japanese investment company Metaplanet was able to accumulate about 3.2 thousand BTC, or $274 million, at the exchange rate on March 28. In 2024, the largest mining company MARA also raised borrowed funds through the issuance of debt obligations.

GameStop did not rule out that the decision to accumulate cryptocurrencies could expose its portfolio to additional risks related to the prices of digital assets, CNBC writes.

"The company will be exposed to certain risks associated with bitcoin or stablecoins," GameStop noted.

GameStop's attempt to curb the cryptocurrency market through investments in cryptocurrency is not the first for it. In 2022, the company launched its own marketplace for trading non-fungible tokens (NFT), as well as a cryptocurrency wallet.

In partnership with the ImmutableХ blockchain project, GameStop planned to develop a crypto direction in the field of gaming assets based on the Ethereum blockchain technology.

As part of the partnership, ImmutableХ provided GameStop with a grant of over 56.2 million ImmutableХ tokens (IMX) in 2022, according to documents on the website of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). At the price of the token at the time of signing the contract on January 28, the amount was more than $150 million.

A week later, the IMX token rose to a local high of $3.39 by February 4, after which, with almost no corrections during the month, the price collapsed to $1.27, according to Coingecko.

According to Etherscan, GameStop's blockchain address fulfilled only two conditions for receiving the grant, receiving 28.1 million and 9.3 million IMX. Thus, it is likely that the conditions of the grant were not fulfilled and in August 2023 the company stopped supporting its crypto wallet, and in January 2024 it closed the NFT trading platform.

According to The Block, in both cases, GameStop referred to regulatory uncertainty.