Unikrn is offering odds on GameStop stocks
Published: Feb 9, 2021 - Last Updated: Jun 24, 2024
Esports betting site, Unikrn, is offering a novel new way to make or lose some money on the recent GameStop share price fluctuations. Unikrn is moving outside of esports betting again to offer odds on the fluctuations of the GameStop stock.
Unikrn is letting users of their esports betting service place bets on the over/under of GameStop’s stock price by the end of February 2021. They are offering a 1.8 payout on whether the stock will end up over or under $225 by the end of February.
By now it is far too late to make any sort of serious money from the GameStop stock, but if you fancy yourself a bit of an armchair investor, you could still make some money on one of the biggest upsets in the world of esports stock trading in almost a decade. They also offer odds on other “meme stocks” like AMC and cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.
What happened with the GameStop stock?
A couple of weeks ago, the share price for GameStop rocketed from $20 a share to $483. Similar but far less crazy things happened to other “meme stocks” like AMC, Nokia, and Koss. These wild market fluctuations can be traced back to the Reddit page, WallStreetBets, the description on their page reads: “Like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal.”
Many users use the page to speculate on investments and stock and option trading. A movement began on the forum in support of companies like GameStop and AMC, companies that have been negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown of business.
Short selling
They realised that many hedge funds were aggressively short selling GameStop stock. Short selling is a tactic used by hedge fund managers and investors who are essentially predicting that a stock’s value will go down. Short sellers borrow shares of a stock, usually from a broker-dealer, before selling them at the market price. Eventually, they will have to buy back the shares and return them. If the value of the stock has decreased, then the short sellers will make money, if the value has increased the short sellers must still return the shares. This means buying them back for more than they sold them for and therefore losing money.
The short squeeze
Members of WallStreetBets realised that if enough of them worked together, they could inflate GameStop’s stock price by buying shares in a large volume, both making themselves money and hurting the short sellers in the process. This process is called a short squeeze.
As a result of the short squeeze on GameStop short sellers, many of the part time traders on Reddit managed to make quite a bit of money. But what was more important to the users on WallStreetBets, was the impact on the larger hedge funds.
Read also: Unikrn Coughs Up $6.1 million to Settle with US Securities and Exchange Commission
Final thoughts
Now that the biggest rush on the “meme stocks” seems to have ended, there doesn’t seem to be a better way to jump on the GameStop bandwagon than betting on the eventual outcome of the stock price at Unikrn. They have a good history of offering unique bets and their experts are great at offering odds.
