They think they will become billionaires because they expect failures to deliver on naked shorts of shares they've directly registered

The 'true believers' in this stock's idiosyncratic risk are expecting a short squeeze due to a confluence of relatively unknown market mechanisms such as FTD, CNS, reg SHO, and the formation of a short-busting coalition between Carl Icahn via BBBYQ and others...

It's a rabbit hole, for sure. But the fact is that the DTCC, FINRA, and other SROs controlling the markets are inscrutable black boxes that don't provide enough data for anyone to know the extent of the fraud they may or may not be perpetuating by systematically creating 'synthetic' shares in the publicly companies regardless of the officially authorized outstanding shares according to the companies' charters.

Look at the ongoing BBBY CH11 bankruptcy proceedings for an example of how difficult it is to get an idea of 'TSO' or (Total Shares Outstanding) for a public company. The claim is that more shares have been created within the DTCC than the company has authorized, and the right corporate maneuvering could force these 'extra' shares to close or cover which would drive demand exceptionally high.

Disclaimer: I own GME because the number of FTDs is in the high millions some days, and the notional values in the 10s of millions. Something is (still, 2 years later) up with this security in particular, and even if I don't become a billionaire from this investment I hope to shine some light on a corrupt corner of the market that has become 'business as usual' while I strongly disagree that it should be tolerated at all. (FTDs and Synthetic Shares)

1) How the market 'truly' operates and 2) how this operation is being abused

https://youtu.be/nLnw2_q5iMk

It is readily apparent why there are investors who think this way, starting with a conspiracy theory about secret messages in a children’s book.

A sibling comment of yours summarized it best - I just understand their vision as an amalgamation of growing the online store considerably, replacing Steam, selling NFTs that in some way relate to in game functionality, and making GameStop stores “community centers” or smtn. All of this is backed up by mantras like “debt-free”, “based Ryan Cohen”, “warehouses full of product”, “corporate vision” etc etc etc.

I really despise finance so I have very little to criticize you on there, and wish you the best, but from your reasonable tone I’m assuming you’re doing this as a considered risk, not going all-in with 100% confidence that a short squeeze is coming any day now.

I oscillate between enjoying that whole part of the internet because it’s fun and interesting, and thinking of all the children who have their college savings tied up in the stock of a clearly dead-in-the-water legacy retailer :(

The plan included hiring a bunch of expensive Amazon execs, selling NFTs, and other very 2021 boom-time ideas that don’t seem to be working out too well.

Although I’m a crypto skeptic, YOShInOn shows me articles from Coindesk every day even though y’all will rarely vote for one if I post it to HN. I’m very aware of what is going on in the crypto world and if a marketing letter doesn’t make any sense to me it could only make sense to a handful of crypto bros.

I think what happens on HN is a subject matter comes up that often doesn’t get much attention on HN, so folks start chiming in with tangentially related but top of (their) mind thoughts/anecdotes.

It’s nice to discuss things like that with the HN crowd, to see what they’re also thinking about things we’ve been thinking about, even if it may not tie in directly with the linked article.

Was wondering this myself. Does this headline mean that this thing has been pumped and dumped and they're back to managing decline? Have unfolding events made the logic behind the bullish argument bad? Something else?