You may remember that in mid-2020, at the height of the COVID-19 hysteria, GameStop, the famous video game retail company, which was a massive player in the gaming industry for the past two decades, was going down the drain. By this, we mean its stocks were failing quite substantially. At this point, a financial educator and streamer, Keith Gill, decided to invest in its stock, detailing his experiences online under the username Roaring Kitty, and he is the person who gets credited for the January 2021 GameStop short squeeze.
A short squeeze is when a stock sees a quick and sizeable rise in price, chiefly due to an excess of short selling. A short in investment lingo is when people/hedge funds bet that an asset will fail. But, not to get too far into the financial weeds here, this incident of an online community manipulating the US stock market caused quite a stir, and it originated from a subreddit called Wall Street Bets. You can watch a movie based on this story called Dumb Money, which came out in 2023.
This unusual situation disturbed the financial securities arena and led to a spike in meme stocks, which were all the rage in 2021. What is a meme stock? It is a viral company asset that has attained dramatic and rapid popularity on account of online sentiment. In the first half of 2023, an account called Wall Street Memes on Twitter/X announced that, inspired by the 2021 GameStop fiasco, they will be launching their community-driven cryptocurrency – the $WSM Token.
Wall Street Memes has dubbed itself the No.1 Meme Community, and it runs a crypto casino and sportsbook that we have reviewed. Here, we tell you what you need to know about this platform’s token and what benefits it can bring to you, as well as if it can enhance your betting experience at WSM Casino.
A Short Description of $WSM
As noted above, this is a cryptocurrency project birthed out of grassroots Internet culture. It has evolved into a DeFi token guided by a strong vision of financial inclusivity. In May 2023, the 26th of this month to be precise, the Wall Street Memes Project launched a presale of their token, which went on to raise more than $25 million. It is valuable to mention that the same team behind this asset launched the Wall St Bulls NFT collection, which sold out in 2021. It did so in a stunning half an hour.
Recently, the WSM token migrated from an Ethereum contract to a Binance Smart Chain one. It is a BEP-20 token, now featuring faster transaction speeds and lower fees. The asset originally had a max supply of two billion (with 50% made available through the presale). At the time of writing, its circulating supply was 1.46 billion. Its highest price point was achieved on October 1st, 2023, when it hit $0.0650, after which it swiftly tumbled down and has been dropping in value ever since.
Pre its white paper, the majority of $WSM tokens have been allocated for community-driven uses, meaning staking, various rewards, and strategic promotions. The team has prioritized community ownership, looking to ensure that the growth of this asset remains tied to user engagement. The development team of the $WSM token has committed 10% of their platform’s net gaming revenue to a buyback program. This strategic move helps support its value, as these buybacks get redistributed as rewards through airdrops and staking pools.
As depicted above, after an initial surge of enthusiasm, interest in this token has dropped off; even though outlets like Coin Market Cap predicted this asset could skyrocket in 2024, it failed to do so.
Staking $WSM
The WSM Casino token site section claims that 1.1 million degens comprise the $WSM community. It’s not a nice term to use for its members, but whatever. As you know, in online gambling, staking is not an established DeFi tool that fuels the growth of many brands’ ecosystems primarily by providing passive income opportunities. So, here, like elsewhere, staking $WSM gets token holders additional rewards that supply an incentive for them to hold $WSM long-term. That is a two-way street, as it benefits holders and the WSM network, giving it enhanced stability and security.
If you wish to engage in this activity, you can get some $WSM by utilizing the Buy and Stake function on the WSM Casino website in the purchase panel. It should be available soon. You can also get these tokens through exchanges that list them, like Bitmart or MEXC Global. After you have some in your possession, you can use the Add to Stake option and start to get rewarded depending on how much you are holding from the staking pool and the annual returns. Note that the tokens get locked for a week from your staking point.
When we posted this article, the token had over thirty-eight thousand holders, with profits from gaming dwarfing betting ones on the WSM Casino site.
Wall Street Memes employs a Proof of Stake mechanism, and going by the info available, Staking $WSM tokens offers an estimated 55% APY. That said, the actual rewards may range depending on the total amount staked, market conditions, and staking durations.
Is the WSM Casino Sportsbook Any Good?
When we gave it a look-see for the first time, it had a low number of sports bonuses. That has now changed, and it appears that this brand is looking to cater more to bettors these days despite the majority of its user pool being into casino gambling. It allows loads of cryptos and provides fast withdrawals based on the user reviews we have read.
You get BETBY’s software here, which only features streams for eSports and simulated events. The rest of the options on hand are comparable to other higher-end hubs that utilize this same solution. The live chat is a bit slow at WSM Casino, and we were not in the mood regarding the play-on-the-go experience here. For more info on what kind of betting you can do at WSM, please check out our in-depth review of this crypto-gambling website.
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