Live footage of Ryan Cohen walking out of the GameStop boardroom this morning:

Well folks, the OG memestock has been suspiciously quiet lately… right up until its CEO decided to remind everyone he’s still clinically insane (in a capitalist way).

This morning, the GameStop chairman/CEO signed a compensation deal so unhinged it makes VC Twitter look conservative… one that pays him nothing unless GameStop transforms from mall corpse to $100 billion juggernaut with $10 billion in cumulative EBITDA.

If he misses a single target? Congrats… you get memes, Twitter threads dissecting your downfall, and maybe a sympathy phone call from Michael Saylor (“have you tried buying more Bitcoin?”). This is capitalism’s version of double or nothing, and Cohen just shoved the entire stack into the middle of the table.

(Source: Reuters)

Now, a quick reality check. GameStop currently sits at about $9.3 billion in market cap, down roughly 36% over the last year, and just reported $77 million in net income on $821 million in quarterly revenue. That’s not nothing… but it’s also not exactly “welcome to the S&P 10, please enjoy your complimentary jacket” territory.

Yet Cohen’s incentive package is structured like a dare. For instance, if GameStop hits $100B in market cap and $10B in cumulative EBITDA, Cohen unlocks the right to buy 171.5 million shares at $20.66. Translation: if he pulls this off, he becomes absurdly rich. If he doesn’t, he gets absolutely cooked in public and paid exactly $0 for the trouble.

Wall Street loves to talk about “incentive alignment.” And Ryan Cohen essentially said “aight, bet.”

What makes this feel extra Mission: Impossible is what’s happening on the ground. While Cohen is dreaming in nine-figure valuations, GameStop is actively closing hundreds of stores. The company already shut 590 U.S. locations last fiscal year, with filings suggesting many more closures before the fiscal year wraps on January 31, 2026.

Store closures are piling up in places like Maine, Michigan, and Kansas (aka the last strongholds of “I like owning my games”).

So what’s the master plan aside from showing everyone your CEO either has big balls or is a complete idiot? That’s… unclear. GameStop has flirted with collectibles, trading cards, and most recently aggressive Bitcoin buying with corporate cash. Crypto wallets? Tried it. Killed it. NFT marketplace? We don’t talk about that anymore. And yet, somehow, all of this is supposed to ladder up into a 10x valuation jump and $10B in operating profits.

To be fair, Cohen has done the impossible before. He turned Chewy into a monster by out-Amazoning Amazon at customer obsession. But pet food delivered to suburban homes is a very different beast than convincing gamers to save GameStop from the mall graveyard.

This comp plan doesn’t feel like compensation so much as a manifesto (with strong “trust me bro” energy). Cohen is basically telling shareholders: I either pull off the most improbable retail turnaround of the decade… or I leave with nothing. Not even a comfy six-figure salary.

Could this be one massive ploy to get WallStreetBets and Roaring Kitty to go crazy again? Most definitely. And Wall Street will keep watching like it’s reality TV.

And if by some miracle, Ryan Cohen really drags GameStop to $100 billion… the internet is gonna lose it’s mind.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in GameStop as mentioned in the article.