GameStop stock Redditor testifies before Congress in House Lannister gaming chair

Keith Gill, one of the big players in the GameStop stock debacle, testified before Congress in a House Lannister gaming chair. Hear him roar.

By now you’ve probably heard of the GameStop short squeeze, where thousands of small investors banded together on Reddit to buy and keep stock in GameStop, driving the price WAY up and screwing professional investors on Wall Street who had bet big that it would drop. Many of those professional investors lost millions, while some of the Redditors made bank.

Among them was Keith Gill, who’s now the target of a lawsuit alleging that he manipulated the market. Gill, a financial analyst who has a big audience on YouTube and a following on r/WallStreetBets (which is where a lot of the organizing happened), bought $50,000 worth of GameStop stock very early on. That turned into $48 million worth of stock at the apex of the short squeeze in late January, although Gill says he only walked away with $13 million in cash; either way, not a bad haul.

Gill was one of several people who testified before the House Financial Services committee yesterday, and defended himself against accusations of wrongdoing. “The market was underestimating the prospects of GameStop’s legacy business in overestimating the likelihood of bankruptcy,” he said in a statement. “I grew up playing video games and shopping at GameStop and I plan to continue shopping there. GameStop stores still provide real value to consumers in reliable revenue for GameStop.”

"The idea that I use social media to promote GameStop stock to unwitting investors and influence the market is preposterous. My post did not cause the movement of billions of dollars into GameStop shares. It is tragic that some people lost money in my heart goes out to them. But what happened in January just demonstrates again, that investing in public securities is extremely risky."

This is all very interesting, but I think we can agree that the real story is that Gill gave his testimony while sitting in a House Lannister-themed gaming chair.

You can’t see it super-well from this angle, but an image for a story on Gill in The Wall Street Journal confirms that this is indeed Secret Lab’s Omega House Lannister gaming chair, which the company sells for $389. Gill could afford a whole mess of them now if he wanted to.

I mean, he definitely chose the right chair, right? If there’s one Great House of Westeros that appreciates the value of money, it’s the Lannisters.

Anyway, glad to see Game of Thrones getting attention on the floor of Congress. Ned Stark for Secretary of Agriculture?

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