Last month, during a visit to GameStop, a hedge fund executive claimed to have received anti-Semitic slurs and texts from Reddit members.
In prepared testimony, Gape Plotkin Melvin Capital’s founder Gabe Plotkin said he plans to testify Thursday at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on the latest populist stock market revolution.
On the Reddit forum “WallStreetBets,” Melvin was a prime target for this new trader. That’s because Melvin had a short-term focus on GameStop, meaning he bet that the value of the struggling video game retailer’s stock would fall.
Reddit users said that while they motivated each other to “reverse trade” Melvin’s investment, they also blamed Plotkin personally.
“Many of the messages contained anti-Semitic slurs against me and others,” Plotkin said. “The messages said, ‘It is quite obvious that we need a second Holocaust, and the Jews can no longer get away with it. Others sent equally profane and racist letters.”
Here’s why GameStop won’t be joining the rally on Reddit.
WallStreetBets has a reputation for being profane and rude. GameStop users often refer to themselves as “morons,” an insulting epithet for the retarded, and Reddit user Keith Gill, who reportedly led the GameStop rally, refers to himself on the forum as “DeepF-ingValue.”
But Reddit CEO Steve Huffman defended WallStreetBets in prepared testimony, saying the 9.1 million-person discussion forum is an online group with “significant depth.”
“WallStreetBets can be tricky and difficult to understand on the surface, but the bottom line is that we are here and now, and we have made an important point about equity and alternatives in the monetary system,” Huffman said.
He also revealed that the unprecedented jump in GameStop’s stock value has had a significant impact on him, both professionally and personally.
Gape Plotkin Melvin Capital, named after his grandfather, closed out his short position in GameStop in the last week of January, when the company’s stock soared to $483.