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The financial analyst turned stock market influencer and meme Roaring Kitty has come roaring back to social media. His apparent return to Twitter on Sunday didn't even directly mention GameStop – the stock whose roller coaster ride has made global headlines and a documentary film – but nevertheless prompted the price of GME to briefly double and preceded a 1,900% augmentation of a tribute piece based on Solana also called GME.
What is the connection between Roaring Kitty, real name Keith Gill, the bankrupt video game retailer, and meme coins?
Gill is not a marginal character. He was the subject of the 2023 film »Stupid money”, who told the story of the 2021 GameStop short squeeze, after his stock analysis and promotion of GameStop shares largely ignited the fire that ravaged Wall Street in 2021 – and led him to testify on Capitol Hill.
THE @TheRoaringKitty The Twitter account came to life on Sunday with an image of a man sitting in his seat, holding a video game controller with a look of keen interest on his face.
It was the first tweet in over 150 weeks. And that was enough to fuel another maelstrom in crypto and traditional investing circles.
Who is Roaring Kitty?
Before taking the financial industry by storm as Roaring Kitty (or DeepFuckingValue on Reddit), Gill dreamed of becoming an athletic star and even appeared in an edition of Sports Illustrated, according to Wall Street Journal. Gill's first foray into creating content on YouTube was posting a 4:33 run, where he lost a bet to break 4:30.
When his dreams of running stardom failed to materialize after injury, Gill focused on the stock market. In 2019, Gill became the director of financial wellness at life insurance company MassMutual. The same year, he joined Reddit and began posting on the WallStreetsBets subreddit.
Gill gained great fame for his role in the GameStop short squeeze that took place on January 27, 2021. Under his “DeepFuckingValueaccount on Reddit, he has gained followers for his investment in GameStop stock, his advocacy for the asset on social media, and his Roaring kitten Youtube channel.
“For the record, these positions are up in March,” Gill wrote in a Reddit post in 2020. “GME crushed the market on a relative basis.”
The stage was set.
Stoppage of play
At the time, the gaming retailer was in financial trouble and many institutional investors and hedge funds believed its GME stock was overvalued, taking short positions in GameStop stock. Shorting is an investment move in which investors borrow stocks and sell them, hoping to buy them back at a lower price and pocket the difference.
At the time, one share of GME stock was worth about $5.16. Before GameStop's surge began, its stock price was well down from its previous all-time high.
Users on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, including Gill, noticed the growing number of short positions placed in GME, sensing an opportunity to trigger a short sale. A short squeeze occurs when the price of an asset rises sharply, prompting traders who had bet on a decline in its price or a “short sale” to liquidate or sell their positions.
While not single-handedly behind the GameStop short squeeze, Gill was an important figure in the conversation, having previously gone against the grain and deemed GameStop undervalued.
“People talk about GameStop disappearing, but here they are about to generate over $2 billion in (revenue) in a single quarter at the end of a console's cycle,” Gill writes under the name from DeepFuckingValue, wrote on Reddit. “The thesis of “going digital” is greatly exaggerated. This business model has weight and the new consoles will be a major tailwind. »
As the price of GME rose, several companies that had bet against GameStop were forced to close their positions, including Melvin Capital, which lost nearly $3 billion for its short sale of GameStop. Anthony Scaramucci, CEO of SkyBridge Capital, compared the GameStop short squeeze to French Revolution.
On January 28, the day after the GameStop short squeeze, Robinhood, the platform of choice for the legion of retail investors, was hit with two lawsuits after the trading platform blocked customers from purchase more GameStop shares during its historic one-day run.
By the time Robinhood blocked the purchase of GameStop, the stock had already reached $492, but quickly fell to $193.
The results
On February 18, 2021, Gill was called to bear witness before the Financial Services Committee of the United States Congress. He was joined at the hearing by the CEOs of Robinhood and multinational hedge fund Citadel.
“It is true that the value of my investment in this company has increased several times. For that, I feel extremely lucky. » Gill said during the virtual hearing. “I also think the current stock price demonstrates that I was right about the company.”
Dispelling any notion that he was a cat, Gill also told members of Congress that he was neither an institutional investor nor a hedge fund.
“I do not have clients and do not provide personalized investment advice for fees or commissions,” he said. “I am just an individual whose investment in GameStop and social media posts are based on my own research and analysis.”
Gill called the idea that he could use social media to promote GameStop stock and influence the market absurd.
“My message did not cause billions of dollars to move into Gamestop stock,” Gill said. “It is tragic that some people are losing money and my heart goes out to them. But what happened in January demonstrates once again that investing in government securities is extremely risky.”
Gill's last post on Reddit was dated April 16, 2021. He quietly left social media on June 18, 2021, after posting a video of sleeping cats on Twitter.
It would be another 151 weeks before Roaring Kitty returned.
After the frenzy around the GameStop short squeeze petered out, the stock price came back down to earth. Currently, it is trading at $36.90.
GameStop has attempted to capitalize on the renewed interest in its business, even going so far as to get into cryptocurrencies and NFTs. But the company's crypto aspirations were short-lived as the company closed its doors. NFT wallet in August 2023 citing regulatory uncertainty and its NFT Marketplace in January this year.
The GameStop short and Roaring Kitty's role in the chaos were the subject of both a documentary and a feature film. In September 2022, Netflix launched streaming mini-series “Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga”, followed in 2023 by the feature film “Stupid money» with Paul Dano as Roaring Kitty and Pete Davidson as Gill's brother Kevin.
The return
News of Roaring Kitty's return inspired social media influencers like Andrew Tate abandoning Bitcoin to invest their money in GameStop stock and meme coins. For his part, Tate said he would sell $500,000 worth of Bitcoin to invest in the latest GameStop short squeeze.
“I’m bringing down Wall Street, watch me,” Tate said. “Fuck them. Fuck them all.”
“Hey bro, what are we buying?” Crypto influencer Ansem asked in response to a Roaring Kitty tweet.
Even Barstool Sports founder David Portnoy was ready to get in on the action, too.
“You want to go crazy (Roaring Kitty), let’s do it!” Portnoy wrote on Twitter. “Every time I think I’m out, they bring me back!” » he said, quoting a line from The Godfather III.
It's unclear why Gill chose Sunday to return to Twitter, or whether he actually did so. Its Reddit and YouTube accounts are still dormant as of this writing, and since Sunday's Twitter post, only about a dozen video clips have followed as of 8 p.m. ET Monday. He did not respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.
But its apparent re-emergence has clearly irked the GameStop gang and inspired a flow of meme coins on SolanaAnd stirred up the broader coin market, including 5.4% for the day with several meme coins, including Dogecoin, Shibu Inu and Pepe, up 5.7%, 5.0% and 15.4%, respectively. This likely explains the nearly 8% intraday rise in Solana's price, from $138.16 to $149.99 on Monday.
If all of this was triggered by a stream of video posts, markets could very well explode if Gill – or whoever currently controls the @TheRoaringKitty account on Twitter – started tweeting explicitly about stocks or crypto.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.