Donald Trump reacts at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference

Donald Trump at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference (Johnnie Izquierdo/Getty Images)

Bad news for Trump Media and GameStop: The power of the “pivot to bitcoin” might be wearing off

Big gains for Trump Media and GameStop this week after bitcoin treasury announcements and purchases quickly reversed into massive losses.

Luke Kawa

5/28/25 10:55AM

The “pivot to” is one of the most tried-and-true ways for existing companies to ride the wave of a new mania and attract fresh investors.

It can be as simple as a name change: Ping Shan Tea Group Limited, which sold (you guessed it) traditional Chinese tea, magically became Blockchain Group Co Ltd. back in 2016. Or it can be more in the framing, like how banks tried to get everyone to think of them as tech companies. We’ve seen it over the past few years when executives tout their company’s AI capabilities regardless of how developed those are or their pertinence to business operations.

While an earlier wave of companies tried to pull off a pivot to blockchain through name changes alone, lately there’s been a more concrete way of tying your stock to bitcoin: by buying it. But this week suggests the power of a bitcoin treasury may be losing its luster.

Usually in journalism we wait for three examples before attempting a trend piece, but two in two days should suffice:

On Tuesday, Trump Media & Technology Group surged in premarket trading after raising billions to establish a bitcoin treasury before an about-face in early trading saw the stock close down 10%.
Today, GameStop was up as much as 7% in the premarket after its first bitcoin purchase before going down double digits a couple hours after the open.

My best guess: if you want to buy what’s effectively a leveraged bitcoin holding company, well... Strategy exists. There was a first-mover advantage here, and it’s going to be incredibly difficult to wrap your stock more thoroughly in bitcoin than what Michael Saylor’s already done. Open to any alternative suggestions!

Max Knoblauch1h

Rivian sure picked a bad time for its AI Day as investors dump tech stocks

The event coordination team at Rivian is probably having a bad one, as investors dumped the stock ahead of its “Autonomy and AI Day” amid a broader AI trade sell-off.

Heading into the event that began at noon ET, Rivian shares were down 5%, following a strongly negative reaction to Oracle’s earnings results. The stock began climbing as Rivian’s event started, but remains in the red on the day.

A year flush with tariffs and the end of the EV tax credit has pushed Rivian to pitch a techier version of its future. During Thursday’s event, Rivian said its forthcoming vehicles would ditch Nvidia chips for its own AI chips produced by Taiwan Semiconductor.

The vehicles will feature lidar sensors, enabling “level 4” autonomous driving (similar to Google’s Waymo), the company said. According to CEO RJ Scaringe, the updates will allow Rivian to “pursue opportunities in the rideshare space,” hinting at future robotaxi plans, which rivals Tesla and Lucid have already begun.

Wall Street appears skeptical of Rivian, with Morgan Stanley this week downgrading the stock to “underweight” and dropping its price target to $12. Lucid, which in October announced it’s planning a privately owned autonomous car built with Nvidia tech, also received a downgrade.

Rivian turns to AI, autonomy to woo investors as EV sales stall

Luke Kawa2h

Robinhood tumbles after November trading volumes post monthly drop across equities, options, and crypto

Robinhood Markets is getting crushed today, and not just because it’s the place where people go to buy AI stocks (which are under big pressure after Oracle’s earnings report). As stocks retreated in November, activity on the platform did, too.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

The brokerage reported that November trading volumes fell across equities, options, and crypto compared to October. Equity notional volumes were down 37% month on month, options contracts traded were off 28%, and crypto notional volumes fell double digits. The bright spot: its prediction markets business is still in boom mode, with 3 billion contracts traded, up 20% versus the prior month.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brett Knoblauch trimmed his price target on the shares to $152 from $155 following this release, noting that this monthly decline was somewhat expected.

After a quarter century, Cisco surpasses dot-com bubble closing high

Matt Phillips2h

Luke Kawa2h

Oracle’s underwhelming results are kneecapping the AI trade

The nasty reception to Oracle’s quarterly results, which included a small revenue miss along with much more capex and cash burn than analysts had anticipated, is cascading through the rest of the AI trade.

Among the names getting hit hard:

AI chip behemoths Nvidia, Broadcom, and Advanced Micro Devices.
Neoclouds CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN, and Cipher Mining.
Infrastructure providers GE Vernova and Vertiv Holdings.
Server companies Super Micro Computer, Dell, and HP Enterprise.

While stocks have recovered strongly since their November 20 intermediate low, that’s been more about bullishness on Google and its partners as well as global growth than the AI trade broadly.

Only one member of the VanEck Semiconductor ETF is negative during this time: Nvidia. The second-worst performer of the bunch over this stretch is AMD, another AI GPU provider.

J. Edward Moreno3h

PetMed soars after disclosing $4-per-share buyout offer from investment firm

PetMed Express soared after disclosing that it had received a take-private buyout offer from Singapore investment firm SilverCape Investments, valuing the company at a significant premium.

SilverCape would pay $4 per share, a 125% premium from the $1.77 the stock closed at on Wednesday. Shares soared 50% in early trading to $2.65.

PetMed said its board would evaluate the offer.

The company, which has been public sine 1997, has reported stagnating sales and slipped into unprofitability in 2024. The online pet pharmacy is down 60% this year and down 96% since its peak in 2018.