Why Ryan Cohen's Bitcoin Bet Reflects His True Business Philosophy

On May 28, 2025, the market was consumed with Federal Reserve commentary when GameStop slipped a disclosure into its SEC filing—almost as an afterthought. The company had quietly purchased 4,710 bitcoins worth $513 million. No announcement. No conference call. Just the bare legal minimum required for transparency.

This was pure Ryan Cohen: making bold moves without fanfare.

When questioned directly, his response was characteristically understated: “Yes. We currently own 4,710 bitcoins.” With that single sentence, he transformed GameStop into the 14th largest corporate holder of bitcoin globally. The move puzzled Wall Street analysts who still couldn’t understand how the same person who once revived a “dying” video game retailer would now gamble on cryptocurrency. But for anyone paying close attention to Cohen’s two-decade track record, this was entirely predictable.

The Pattern That Started With Pet Food

Ryan Cohen’s business philosophy isn’t complicated, but it’s almost never obvious to outsiders. In 2011, while other entrepreneurs feared competing with Amazon’s dominance, a 25-year-old Cohen spotted an opportunity in pet supplies—not because it was a gap in the market, but because he understood something deeper: customers don’t just want products; they want to feel understood.

He built Chewy on an unconventional principle for that era: invest heavily in customer relationships over operational efficiency. His team sent handwritten holiday cards. They created custom pet portraits for loyal customers. When beloved pets died, they sent flowers. These gestures were expensive and difficult to scale—exactly the type of expenses most VCs wanted to eliminate.

Between 2011 and 2013, Cohen pitched over 100 venture capital firms. Most saw a college dropout chasing an impossible dream in a market dominated by an unbeatable competitor. The rejections weren’t wrong on paper; they were wrong about understanding where value actually lives in a business.

When Volition Capital finally invested $15 million in 2013, it unlocked Cohen’s ability to scale customer obsession. By 2018, Chewy had generated $3.5 billion in annual revenue. PetSmart acquired the company for $3.35 billion—the largest e-commerce acquisition of its time. Cohen walked away at 31, wealthy enough to step back entirely.

The Unexpected Intermission, and What Came After

For three years, Ryan Cohen deliberately disappeared from the public eye. He became a family man. An active investor in blue-chip stocks like Apple (accumulating 1.55 million shares). A philanthropist. He seemed content with his wealth and legacy.

Then he discovered GameStop.

In September 2020, while conventional wisdom wrote off the video game retailer as a relic suffocated by digital downloads, Cohen saw what others missed. GameStop wasn’t just a retail chain; it was a cultural institution. Its customers were passionate communities willing to pay premiums for connection and experience—the exact same insight that built Chewy.

RC Ventures, his investment firm, quietly accumulated nearly 10% of the struggling retailer’s shares. Wall Street was baffled. Why would someone as successful as Cohen touch a sinking ship?

By January 2021, he’d joined GameStop’s board. What followed—a 1,500% stock price surge in two weeks and the most famous short squeeze in modern market history—was less about meme stocks and more about the beginning of fundamental restructuring.

Cohen’s playbook from Chewy played out identically: cut bloated leadership, bring in talent from Amazon and e-commerce giants who understood digital transformation, eliminate waste while protecting everything customer-facing, and build a fortress of cash reserves. The results speak clearly. When he took over, GameStop was losing over $200 million annually on $5.1 billion in revenue. Three years of systematic restructuring produced the company’s first profitable year in 2023-2024, with a 440 basis point gross margin improvement and $131 million in profit—despite a 25% revenue decline.

The Cryptocurrency Detour That Taught the Right Lesson

GameStop’s first cryptocurrency experiment in 2022—an NFT marketplace for gaming collectibles—generated $3.5 million in trading volume within 48 hours. It looked promising. Then the NFT market collapsed catastrophically. Trading volume plummeted from $77.4 million in 2022 to $2.8 million by 2023. The company shuttered both its crypto wallet and NFT trading feature by early 2024.

Most executives would have treated this as a full retreat from digital assets. Ryan Cohen treated it as education.

Bitcoin as Strategic Hedge, Not Speculation

The Bitcoin purchase reveals why Cohen thinks differently than most CEOs. He didn’t invest GameStop’s core cash reserves; he financed the $513 million purchase through convertible bonds while maintaining over $4 billion in liquid reserves. This isn’t an all-in gamble. It’s a calculated hedge.

His reasoning follows a specific logic: If currency devaluation becomes a systemic risk, Bitcoin and gold function as stores of value. Bitcoin offers advantages over gold—instant global transferability, instant blockchain verification of authenticity, easier storage without insurance costs, and truly fixed supply (whereas gold supply remains uncertain).

When GameStop’s stock price initially fell following the announcement, Cohen appeared unmoved. On June 25, the company exercised an overallotment option on its convertible bond issuance, raising an additional $450 million and bringing total convertible debt to $2.7 billion. The funds were explicitly designated for “general corporate purposes and investments consistent with GameStop’s investment policy”—which explicitly included Bitcoin purchases.

The Unspoken Advantage: Patient Capital

The most underrated aspect of Ryan Cohen’s strategy isn’t the Bitcoin decision itself. It’s the millions of retail investors who refuse to sell their GameStop shares. They call themselves “apes.” They don’t trade on earnings reports or analyst downgrades. They hold because they believe in Cohen’s vision and want to witness where it leads.

This is “patient capital”—almost unprecedented in public markets. Cohen doesn’t face quarterly pressure. His core shareholders won’t abandon him over price fluctuations. This allows him to execute strategies that would terrify shareholders of ordinary public companies.

The same investors who forced the 2021 short squeeze remain engaged four years later, watching how Cohen transforms a “dead” retailer into something entirely new. For most CEOs, this would be fantasy. For Cohen, it’s the foundation of his entire approach.

Why This Matters Beyond GameStop

Ryan Cohen’s career follows a consistent pattern: identify communities others dismissed, invest obsessively in their genuine needs, build durable relationships, then reinvest profits into the next layer of his vision. He did it with pet owners. He’s doing it with gamers. Now he’s positioning GameStop as a holder of the most portable, verifiable store of value in digital form.

When the market questioned his Bitcoin purchase, it revealed the same skepticism that dismissed Chewy in 2013 and GameStop in 2020. They were looking at the transaction. They weren’t understanding the philosophy behind it.

“GameStop follows GameStop’s strategy; we do not follow anyone else’s strategy,” Cohen said after the announcement.

The statement encapsulates his entire approach: ignore the noise, follow the logic, move when others hesitate, and let results speak louder than explanations. Whether Bitcoin becomes GameStop’s treasury centerpiece or remains a hedge for uncertain times, the decision itself confirms why Ryan Cohen remains one of the most closely watched strategists in modern business.