Who is Roaring Kitty and what does his return mean for cryptocurrency?

Financial analyst turned stock and meme influencer Roaring Kitty is back on social media. While he didn’t directly mention GameStop (the stock that has gone on a roller coaster ride, sparking global headlines and documentary films) in his return to Twitter on Sunday, he nonetheless briefly doubled the price of GME and a 1,900% surge in the Solana-based tribute coin. I did. Also called GME.

Is there a connection between failed video game retailer Keith Gill’s Roaring Kitty and meme coins?

Gill is not a peripheral figure. He became the subject of the 2023 film “Dumb Money,” which told the story of GameStop short-selling in 2021 after his stock analysis and campaign to promote GameStop stock became a major spark of the fire that swept Wall Street in 2021. At the Capitol.

He announced his return on Sunday with a single tweet featuring a man seated, holding a video game controller, interest on his face.

This was his first tweet in 150 weeks. And this was enough to create another whirlwind in both the cryptocurrency and traditional investment circles.

Who is Growling Kitty?

Before taking the financial sector by storm with Roaring Kitty (or DeepFuckingValue on Reddit), Gill dreamed of becoming a track and field star and even Sports Illustrations, According to wall street journal. Gill’s first attempt at content creation on YouTube was posting a 4:33 run, in which he lost a bet to beat 4:30.

Although his dreams of racing stardom went unfulfilled after an injury, Gill shifted his focus to the stock market. In 2019, Gill became director of financial wellness at life insurance company MassMutual. That same year, he joined Reddit and started posting on the WallStreetBets subreddit.

Gill gained widespread notoriety for his role in the GameStop short selling that occurred on January 27, 2021. On Reddit’s “DeepFuckingValue” account, he advocates investments in GameStop stock, social media assets, and his Roaring Kitty YouTube channel.

“For your information, this position was posted in March,” Gill wrote in a 2020 Reddit post. “GME has relatively underperformed the market.”

The stage is set.

game stop

At the time, the gaming retailer was struggling financially, and many institutional investors and hedge funds believed GME stock was overvalued and took short positions on GameStop stock. A short position is an investment move in which investors borrow shares, sell them, buy them back at a lower price, and pocket the difference.

At the time, GME stock was worth about $5.16. Before the GameStop surge began, the stock was well below its previous all-time highs.

Users on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, including Gill, noticed an increase in short positions in GME and sensed an opportunity to trigger a selling squeeze. A “sell squeeze” is when the price of an asset rises sharply, causing traders who had bet on the price to fall or “sell” to liquidate or sell their positions.

While not alone behind the GameStop short squeeze, Gill has been a prominent figure in the conversation, having previously gone against the grain and viewed GameStop as undervalued.

“People are talking about the end of GameStop, but here we are, set to generate over $2 billion in revenue in one quarter at the end of the console cycle,” Gill, who wrote the piece DeepFuckingValue, wrote on Reddit. “The ‘go digital’ claim is overblown. “This business model has legs and the new consoles will be a huge 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 by shorting GameStop. SkyBridge Capital CEO Anthony Scaramucci compared the GameStop short-seller squeeze: french revolution.

On January 28, the day after the GameStop short selling, Robinhood, the platform of choice for many retail investors, was hit with two lawsuits after the trading platform blocked customers from buying more GameStop shares during a historic day. .

When Robinhood blocked purchases of GameStop, the stock had already reached $492, but soon fell to $193.

aftermath

On February 18, 2021, Gill was asked to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. He was joined at the hearing by the CEO of Robinhood and the multinational hedge fund Citadel.

“It is true that the value of my investment in that company has multiplied. In that respect, I feel very lucky.” Gill said during the virtual hearing: “I also believe the current stock price proves I was right about the company.”

Gill, seeking to dispel any notion that he is a cat, told lawmakers that he is neither an institutional investor nor a hedge fund.

“We don’t have clients and we don’t provide personalized investment advice for fees or commissions,” he said. “I am just an individual who invested in GameStop, and what I post on social media is the result of my own research and analysis.”

Gill said the idea that social media could be used to promote GameStop stock and influence the market is absurd.

“My post didn’t cause billions of dollars to move into Gamestop stock,” Gill said. “It is tragic that some people have lost their money and my heart goes out to them. But what happened in January shows once again that investing in public securities is extremely risky.”

Gill’s last Reddit post was dated April 16, 2021. He quietly left social media on June 18, 2021, after posting a video of a sleeping cat on Twitter.

It will be another 151 weeks before the growling cat returns.

After the enthusiasm for GameStop short-selling died down, the stock came back down to earth. It is currently trading at $36.90.

GameStop has tried to capitalize on the new interest in its business, even branching out into cryptocurrencies and NFTs. However, the company’s cryptocurrency aspirations were short-lived as the company shut down its NFT wallet in August 2023 and the NFT market in January of this year, citing regulatory uncertainty.

Roaring Kitty’s role in the GameStop short squeeze and chaos has been the focus of both documentaries and feature films. In September 2022, Netflix released the streaming miniseries ‘Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga’, and in 2023, the feature film ‘Dumb Money’ starring Paul Dano as Roaring Kitty and Pete Davidson as Gill’s brother Kevin. has been released.

return

News of Roaring Kitty’s return inspired social media influencers like Andrew Tate to dump Bitcoin and put money into GameStop stock and meme coins. Tate said he would sell $500,000 in Bitcoin to invest in the latest GameStop short.

“Watch me as I take down Wall Street,” Tate said. “Fuck you. Fuck everything.”

“Hello bro, what are we buying?” Crypto influencer Ansem asked in response to a Roaring Kitty tweet.

David Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, was also ready to jump in.

“You want to go crazy (Roaring Kitty), go crazy!” Portnoy wrote on Twitter: “Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in!” He said, quoting a line from The Godfather Part III.

It’s unclear why Gill decided to return to Twitter on Sunday. His Reddit and YouTube accounts are still dormant as of this writing. And it’s also unclear whether he will resume his tweets after posting 12 times by 8 PM ET on Monday. He did not respond to a request for comment. decryption.

However, with his reappearance, the memecoin market rose 5.4% per day, and several memecoins, including Dogecoin, Sibuinu, and Pepe, rose 5.7%, 5.0%, and 15.4%, respectively.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.