On April 1st, the Item Shop in the shooter Fortnite Battle Royale offers the new skin ‘Diamond Hanz’ (Aktien-Kurt). This is Epic Games’ response to the hype in gaming around stocks, which was triggered by the Reddit /wallstreetbets and has captivated many gamers.
What kind of skin is this? The skin is called Diamond Hanz, in German Aktien-Kurt. It is a strange bald, pixelated figure that does not seem to fit Fortnite at first glance.
In German, it comes with the slogan ‘Buy! Hodl! Win!’ (in English Buy! Hodl! Win!). The skin is available for purchase until the night of April 2nd.
The figure costs 1200 V-Bucks, which is about €12. This is no April Fools’ joke from Epic Games; this is a real skin.
What is the deal with this strange skin? The skin is a reference to several memes related to the current stock frenzy that has captured parts of the gaming community.
- The name ‘Diamond Hanz’ is a reference to ‘Diamond Hands’, a term for stock traders who hold onto a stock with ‘diamond-hard’ resolve, even if it drops below the price at which they bought the stock.
- ‘Hodl’ is a misspelling of the term ‘Hold’. It refers to holding onto a stock. ‘Hodl’ became a rallying cry in the subreddit /Wallstreetbets, encouraging users to hold onto GME (GameStop) shares even when the price threatened to plummet.
- The figure itself and the image are part of numerous ‘Stonks’ memes that encouraged the purchase of stocks like GameStop. The ‘Stonks’ image first appeared in 2017 on Facebook (via knowyourmeme).
GameStop Triggers Stock Frenzy
What is this stock frenzy about? For several months, some gamers and influencers have entered a stock fever. This is primarily connected to the subreddit /Wallstreetbets.
The company GameStop is publicly traded. They operate a chain of stores that sell video games and video game accessories. According to ‘normal market logic’, this is actually a company with no profitable future. More and more gamers are buying games digitally.
Therefore, investors assumed that GameStop would go the way of video rental stores and would gradually lose business, closing more and more locations and sinking deeper into the red.
As a result, large investors in hedge funds bet against GameStop’s stock price, in so-called ‘Shorts.’
On Reddit, users banded together, encouraging each other to buy GameStop shares and drive the price up. They motivated each other with pop culture memes.
It became stylized as a kind of battle: We, the little people, against the big shots and hedge funds. They repeatedly used images from pop culture to stylize it as a battle of good against evil in the worlds of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or The Matrix.
When there is a very high demand for shares, the stock price rises. This puts pressure on those who have bet against the stock. This is called a ‘Short Squeeze.’
This behavior, where retail investors agree via social media to buy a stock and encourage each other with memes to hold and continue buying that stock, has caused huge turbulence on the stock market. Hedge funds are not used to such behavior.
The stock of GameStop has since experienced wild price fluctuations, rising by several thousand percent, then rapidly falling, only to rise again.
The Fortnite skin now references this phenomenon – with the battle cry ‘Hodl.’
Many Consider the Skin an April Fools’ Joke
This is how the skin is received: The skin seems to be received quite mixed among players:
- Many think it’s probably an April Fools’ joke.
- Some say, ‘the Stonks figure’ doesn’t like coming to Fortnite at all.
- Some criticize Fortnite sharply for a ‘stupid spelling mistake’ – claiming that they spelled HODL wrong.
More about the background regarding Wallstreetbets and which influencers are involved:
Twitch Star xQc, Reddit and Elon Musk fight against Wall Street
