The WallStreetBets community, which sparked the spontaneous rally in GameStop earlier this year, is creating a separate subreddit – that is, a Reddit channel dedicated exclusively to cryptocurrency discussions.
According to a recent announcement from user bawse1, it will be “the same community, the same format, the same things everyone liked about WallStreetBets, managed by the same people” .
By tradition, let’s start with an explanation. In fact, WallStreetBets is a place for communication between people who are engaged in investments. Representatives of this community came to the attention of the media in January 2021. It was then that they undertook to buy up shares of GameStop, which was at a stage of stagnation, including due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The problem was that the big funds were taking advantage of the situation, making money from the financial difficulties of GameStop. Therefore, the Internet community decided to fix everything: they provoked a sharp rise in stocks and thus provided losses to giant funds. We wrote more about the history in a separate article .
The efforts of representatives of the WallStreetBets community were appreciated by cryptocurrency lovers who respect decentralization and independence from major players in the market. In this regard, the creators of the CoinMarketCap platform even at one time placed the subreddit icon in the first place of their rating.
Now the community is becoming more crypto-friendly. Here are the details of what is happening.
What will happen to cryptocurrencies?
To date, the number of subreddit r / WallStreetBets has grown to 11 million people. This section of the social platform became the basis for accelerating the price of GME shares, which traded in the region below $ 20 at the beginning of the year . Thanks to memes, cohesion and collective calls to buy securities, section visitors were able to push the price of GME above the $ 400 line .
One of the reasons for the growth was the desire to punish large funds that were shorting GameStop shares. That is, in fact, they earned on their collapse and, in addition, they themselves contributed to the decline in the asset rate. This approach seemed at least unfair to the representatives of the Internet community.
Dynamics of GME share price since the beginning of this year
At first glance, cryptocurrency trading might seem like an ideal topic for discussion at the WSB. Crypto assets are causing the same hype as GameStop and other spontaneously rising stocks. But until recently, there was an official rule on the subreddit prohibiting any discussion on the topic of crypt . The exceptions in April were Bitcoin , Ethereum and Dogecoin – but other coins were still banned.
According to user bawse1, the decision of the moderators not to touch on the cryptocurrency topic was very purposeful: investors focused only on the stock market and did not want to allow “crypto scams” in the section. By the way, the lifting of the ban for the three aforementioned cryptocurrencies lasted for about 48 hours, Decrypt reports . After an article in Bloomberg that the famous subreddit “recognized the crypt”, all the crypto assets on it were again “outlawed”.
Home page of the r / cryptocurrency subreddit
Now, Bitcoin and altcoin fans from the WSB community will have their own corner to discuss coins without hard restrictions. However, some other community rules have moved here – no «worship» of individual crypto-assets and a ban on schemes for the so-called pump, that is, the purposeful purchase of coins for their rapid growth and sale.
Recall that a separate subreddit entirely for cryptocurrencies was created quite a long time ago – on May 11, 2013. Actually, partly due to the fact that crypto investors have their own discussion platform, the WallStreetBets community has long been reluctant to open the doors for crypto discussions. The rapidly growing popularity of the industry this year simply would not have kept the subreddit from constant spam about Bitcoin and altcoins.
We believe that softening the rules in relation to cryptocurrencies on this channel will definitely have a good effect on their popularization. Yet WallStreetBets is still a legend as a place that was able to withstand the largest players in the financial market, and in this regard, it attracts a lot of attention. This means that part of this popularity will go to digital assets.
