GameStop Is Bailing on Crypto a Year After Adoption

Video game retailer GameStop is pulling the plug on its cryptocurrency wallet just over a year after it first adopted them.

According to a notice on GameStop’s web3 hub, the company is removing its wallets from the market on November 1 of this year due to “regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space.” Customers will be able to recover their account in compatible wallets as long as they have access to their “Secret Passphrase” to unlock it.

GameStop first entered the crypto space last May with its self-custodial crypto wallet system, and not long after launched an NFT marketplace through Australian blockchain startup Immutable X. The NFT storefront received immediate criticism at launch for its weak offering of interesting NFTs and a seeming lack of money to be made, as well as reportedly selling NFT games without the permission of their creators.

The company continues to run the NFT storefront even as it winds down its crypto wallet. However, it appears to have stagnated after GameStop said in an earnings call last December that it would be paring back these ventures as well after another quarter of massive net losses.

Notably, company CFO Diana Saadeh-Jajeh — who describes herself on her LinkedIn as a “decision maker for key business strategies including NFT, digital wallet and crypto initiatives” at GameStop — resigned last week. And just a month earlier, the company terminated Matt Furlong, the now-former CEO who similarly drove a number of these initiatives.

Furlong has been replaced with Chewy founder Ryan Cohen, who has been a key part of the company’s last few years of struggle with both finances and identity amid a slow decline of brick-and-mortar game retailers.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.