WallStreetBets Founder Talks About GameStop, WSB Future, And Its Connection To Bitcoin And Crypto (Exclusive)

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Anyone who is even remotely interested in investing and trading is certainly familiar with the GameStop saga. It was an event that rocked the financial community to a point we had never seen before.

It all started on a subreddit called WallStreetBets, which has grown into one of the most popular subreddits, home to over 10 million users.

CryptoPotato had the pleasure of speaking to its founder – Jaime Rogozinski. In this interview, we talk about WSBs past, present, future, as well as what we can expect for the future.

What kind of person does it take to create WallStreetBets?

While in full swing in January, WallStreetBets was actually established over 10 years ago. As easy as it is to take the community for granted as it is today, there was a time when it was not so easy to find people to talk to about trading and investing.

We were interested in the kind of person it takes to create a community like this. He told us that he is a handy entrepreneur with a background in computer science. He said he has founded a few successful businesses, as well as a few without success, much like the path of other self-propelled entrepreneurs.

Jaime Rogozinski, founder of the WSB. Image from: Bloomberg

However, his curiosity drove him to figure out how to make his disposable income work and grow it.

As I started to learn more about the stock market and ETFs in particular, I’m talking about the synthetic, leveraged, and exotic variety – the really fancy things that kind of blew me away, I wanted to know how these things exist, and how are they even legal?

He said they provide traders with great opportunities, providing an example of short selling a stock – if you want to do it the conventional way, you have to meet the margin requirements. However, you can also buy shares of a reverse ETP, which would offload the risk onto someone else.

Essentially, it was his passion for understanding how these things work that drove him to create a community where they could discuss it.

I wanted to create a community where we can discuss how these things work and point out some of the nonsense that exists in the market and start an interesting dialogue.

To be completely honest, he also said he never anticipated the growth WSB has experienced. He also revealed that at first it was just him who started out as a hobby. Later, as it started to grow, he brought in more moderators.

The GameStop saga through the eyes of Rogozinsky

While this may have seemed like a hit and miss to those who haven’t followed the WSB before, Rogozinski told us that:

Throughout the years of WSB, these memes stocks have been all the rage. Years ago there were a lot of people who were interested in AMD, Tesla, Apple and Google – it kind of keeps transforming – that was 5 years ago and people just kept on going. ‘select others. There is a sort of pattern as to which actions are selected. His actions are often tangible and people can feel and relate to them.

He revealed that for the most part, this is a community effort and actions tend to go viral, just like a video on social media would.

With GameStop in particular, we have a guy, Keith Gill, named Roaring Kitty on YouTube. He had this passion for GameStop – he really loved it, he’s a gamer. He’s also a smart analyst, he understands the action – he hammered and he had his own investment long before this year.

GameStop specifically had properties that made it sensitive to short tap and the type of movement we saw.

Rogozinski said there were several components involved in the rise of GameStop, and as it started to gain media attention, it was like adding fuel to the fire.

After GME

As the action started to gain momentum, major trading venues (such as Robinhood) stopped trading due to various concerns. The Nasdaq CEO even said he might consider halting stock trading if there is an increase in social media talk.

Prefaced with investor protection concerns, it all left a bitter taste in the mouths of many retail investors, leaving many to feel that the big guys have won once again.

Speaking on the matter and why brokers had to restrict trading, Rogozinski said:

… It all had to do with that archaic back-end system that had existed since stock trading consisted of passing certificates on horseback across Manhattan.

Still, he stressed that one of the good things that came out of the whole ordeal was the attention to the system.

Crypto, Bitcoin and WallstreetBets

The cryptocurrency community has responded strongly to the whole, and most have been overwhelmingly positive.

Jaime admitted he was particularly surprised and excited by the reaction.

I think there was that feeling of empowerment for the little guy, which is a great story. The real truth is, it’s black and white. There’s no little guy and no big guy, it’s all pretty interconnected and we can coexist, and it’s pretty cool that now the little guys have found a way to voice their opinion and voice their opinion and to take control of their situation.

Rogozinski said he has been following crypto since he started. He even said he tried to buy bitcoin when he was just starting out, but gave up because there was no intuitive way to do it. Still, he continued to follow it academically, believing it to be really well thought out economically and technically.

He revealed that he had recently immersed himself in the industry and wished he had done so sooner.

Continuing his involvement in the industry, Rogozinski is now building the WSB DApp – a decentralized community-owned and operated version of the WSB subreddit. The app’s WSB DAO is intended to openly encourage the free flow of information and public opinion, turning them into actionable results.

Jaime is basically talking about the app, as well as some other exciting stuff, so stay tuned and check out the video interview!

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