Gaming retailer GameStop has announced that it will shut down its non-fungible token (NFT) platform. As of February 2, users will no longer be able to buy, sell, or create collectible NFTs. Owners will retain access to existing tokens and will be able to sell them on other platforms.
The company cited the legal uncertainty of the industry as the reason for abandoning NFTs. For the same reason, the company announced the closure of its crypto wallet last year.
GameStop launched an NFT platform in July 2022. The marketplace was initially focused on digital collectibles, but later the developers added support for Web3 games built on the Ethereum Immutable X network. In the first 48 hours, about $3.5 million worth of NFTs were sold on the platform, but very quickly, token trading dropped sharply. Already in December, the company announced that it was stopping investments in cryptocurrencies due to losses, the amount of which in the third quarter of the year amounted to $94.7 million.
As The Verge notes, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has had a keen interest in cryptocurrency throughout 2023 and took unregistered security action against an NFT project for the first time in August. We are talking about NFTs issued by Impact Theory, which the commission recognized as unlicensed securities. As a result, Impact Theory paid a $6.1 million fine and canceled all royalties from the sale of its NFTs on secondary markets.
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