GameStop Squeeze
Retail investors on the r/wallstreetbets subreddit coordinated to buy GameStop shares and call options, forcing hedge funds shorting the stock into a squeeze. GME rose from $17 at the start of January to $483 on January 28. Melvin Capital, which had been GME's largest short, lost $6.8 billion and wound down the following year. Robinhood halted buying at the peak of the squeeze, triggering congressional hearings and a permanent shift in how retail investors viewed the platform.
WallStreetBets coordinated on Reddit to squeeze Melvin Capital's GME short. First time retail investors, coordinated through social media, defeated institutional money at scale.
05 · Twitter & Crypto Influencers
A single Musk tweet could move Bitcoin 15% before most people read it. Algorithms scraped Twitter in real-time and executed trades faster than human cognition.
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