GameStop's best quarter ever came with a $75M Bitcoin hit

GameStop had its best second quarter ever for operating income — $160.2 million, a record. But the same earnings report showed something else this week. It included a roughly $75 million paper loss on the Bitcoin the company holds as an investment. One number shows the core retail business doing well. The other shows what happens when a retailer also acts like a crypto investor.

GameStop started buying Bitcoin as a treasury investment in 2025. It joined other public companies that added crypto to their balance sheets. This quarter, Bitcoin's price worked against it. That turned into a real accounting loss. Separately, the company's net income got a boost from about $238 million. Those gains came from its stake in eBay — a completely different part of the business. It has nothing to do with the Bitcoin loss, or with the record operating income from store and game sales. The lesson: once a company holds crypto on its books, its earnings ride the crypto market's mood. That's true whether or not crypto is the business the company is actually in.

Keep reading — what to watch

Will GameStop keep holding onto its Bitcoin through more swings like this? So far, yes — the company hasn't signaled any plan to sell. Watch whether that changes if the losses keep piling up. Also watch whether other companies that copied GameStop's Bitcoin strategy start reporting similar hits.