GameStop shorts lose over $1 billion in mark-to-market losses on Monday amid meme-stocks demand

GameStop (GME) price exploded on Monday, making headlines and drawing attention to the gaming ecosystem. It came following the restoration of Roaring Kitty on X, after years of silence.

Also Read: Top meme coins post gains following increased social activity amid GameStop pump

GameStop soars on Roaring Kitty

Roaring Kitty, identified as Keith Gill, had been silent since June 2021. Despite the silence, he is a renowned personality on the WallStreetBets subreddit and YouTube, given his bullish stance on GameStop.

The post that marked his comeback came on Sunday, featuring a meme of a video gamer leaning forward. The gamer appeared keen on the game. This post drew a lot of attention, garnering over 81,000 likes and 9,000 comments in a short while. It has over 21.8 million views now, 107K likes and 10K comments.

With this level of attention, GameStop short-sellers have lost $1 billion in the first hour of trading on Monday after 2,200% surge. The token is up 1,393% at press time to trade for $0.007241 as the Solana-based GME token basks in the attention. This is so much so that multiple exchanges reportedly had trouble processing orders following GameStop rally, and consequently, GME paused due to volatility x3.

GameStop linked to social media activity and the previous meme stock bubble

The attention saw Reddit shares skyrocket by nearly 10% on the news, with market watchers drawing a relationship between social media activity and the previous meme stock bubble. 

Daily trading volume for GameStop shares went past 150 million shares at some point, marking a major difference relative to the average trading volume for GME. That’s massive compared to the average GME trading volume. The same was seen in the GME shares, causing those who had taken short positions on GameStop to lose around $1 billion in value in a single day.

As the euphoria continues, there is speculation that more short positions could get blown out of the water, given the current demand for the particular meme stock.

At the time of writing, GME is trading for $0.0082, up 562% in the last 24 hours

GME stock 1-day chart, GME/USDT 3-day chart