GameStop Corp. on Thursday (Feb. 3) announced it has partnered with Australian blockchain startup Immutable X Pty Limited to create a fund worth up to $100 million in Immutable X’s IMX tokens, which will used to create non-fungible token (NFT) content and technology.
As part of the collaboration, Immutable X will become a layer-2 partner and platform for GameStop and its NFT marketplace, which is likely to launch later this year. Immutable X will provide up to $150 million in IMX tokens to GameStop upon the achievement of certain milestones, the announcement says.
Last month, The Wall Street Journal said GameStop had hired more than 20 people to run its new NFT- and cryptocurrency-related division. Activist investor Ryan Cohen, who was named GameStop chairman in June, has said the company must become more tech-centric and has vowed to make that happen.
GameStop shares have fallen about 50% in the past three months, WSJ reported Thursday, but they are still well above where they stood two years ago. The company is moving into unproven territory with its jump into NFTs and will join a small group of other NFT marketplaces with tokens from game publishers with the Immutable X partnership.
Immutable debuted late in 2017. It has 152 employees, Co-founder and President Robbie Ferguson told WSJ, adding that the company has raised around $85 million in funding.
Related: Criminals See NFTs as a Lucrative Target — They May Be Wrong
Meanwhile, blockchain intelligence form Chainalysis said in a blog post Wednesday (Feb. 2) that NFT crime is growing, but the fact that each NFT is unique means many criminals are finding it’s tough to cash in on them.
When it comes to both wash trading and money laundering NFTs, the value of the token lies in its traceability. In wash trading, an NFT owner repeatedly buys and sells an NFT to dummy accounts, driving up its perceived value. Cryptocurrency wash trading has been used to jack up trading volumes at lesser-known exchanges.
Money laundering, meanwhile, is a much smaller issue remains in NFTs so far, Chainalysis found, but it is a potentially serious one, with $2.4 million laundered by buying and selling NFTs in the second half of 2021.
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