It’s worth noting those coins no longer count as a direct holding and now sit as a $369.6 million claim for repayment, about $58 million below their cost, while selling the options brought in $5.8 million over the period, per the filing.
A covered call is a deal where you own something, sell someone else the right to buy it at a fixed price, and pocket a fee for your trouble. The fixed price is the strike, and if the asset climbs past it, the buyer can take it, so the seller keeps the fee but loses the upside.
But GameStop's Bitcoin stash only contributed roughly $1 million to earnings for the quarter, listed as a gain on digital assets, over a period when the company posted a record net income of about $390 million.
Notably, most of that profit traced to interest earned on its cash pile and a paper gain on its eBay options position, with its retail business making up a smaller share, per GameStop's filing.
By the close of the quarter on May 2, Bitcoin was trading near the $80,000 strike, which raised the value of the contracts as the buyer's right to claim the coins moved closer. Bitcoin stayed below that level through May 29, and the options went unexercised, leaving GameStop with the premium.
Decrypt has reached out to GameStop for comment and will update this article should they respond.
