How Ryan Cohen Built GameStop Into a Bitcoin Treasury: From Chewy's Customer Strategy to Crypto Reserves

In May 2025, buried in a routine Securities and Exchange Commission filing that most investors never read, Ryan Cohen made another characteristic move—quiet, calculated, and without fanfare. GameStop’s 8-K disclosure revealed a startling line item: “Purchased a total of 4,710 bitcoins.” With that single transaction worth over $500 million, Ryan Cohen had quietly positioned GameStop as the 14th largest corporate holder of Bitcoin globally. No press conference, no investor call—just the legal minimum required by regulators. When asked directly if the purchase was real, Cohen’s response was typical: “Yes. We currently own 4,710 bitcoins.”

This move wasn’t random. It reflected a strategic pattern that has defined Ryan Cohen’s entire career: identifying undervalued opportunities, executing bold transformations, and holding long-term conviction despite external skepticism. The same conviction that built Chewy into a $3.35 billion acquisition target now guides GameStop’s digital and financial transformation.

The Formation of a Business Philosophy: From Teenage Startup to E-Commerce Pioneer

Ryan Cohen’s entrepreneurial instinct emerged long before he attended college. Born in Montreal in 1986 to a mother who taught school and a father, Ted Cohen, who ran an import business, Cohen absorbed business fundamentals from childhood. When his family relocated to Coral Springs, Florida, the teenage Cohen recognized an emerging opportunity—the internet. At 15, he launched his first online venture, earning commissions through e-commerce referral networks while his peers still viewed the internet as a temporary fad.

By 16, Cohen had evolved from basic online transactions into a more sophisticated operation. His father became his primary mentor, instilling three principles that would define his later success: delayed gratification, work ethic, and viewing business relationships as decades-long partnerships rather than quarterly transactions. When Cohen decided to leave the University of Florida—a controversial choice at the time—he had already proven he could acquire customers and generate sustainable revenue. College credentials seemed irrelevant compared to hands-on market validation.

Chewy: The Birth of Customer-Centric Disruption

In 2011, the e-commerce landscape appeared saturated. Amazon dominated product selection and logistics. Every rational entrepreneur saw competition as suicide. Ryan Cohen saw differently. He identified a market segment where traditional logistics efficiency mattered less than human connection: pet supplies.

Pet owners don’t simply purchase products; they protect family members. They need empathy, guidance, and understanding that a sick pet represents a crisis, not merely an inconvenience. Cohen’s insight was deceptively simple: combine Amazon’s supply chain capabilities with Zappos’ legendary customer service philosophy, then apply it specifically to pet owners’ emotional needs.

Chewy’s execution reflected this strategy. Customer service representatives didn’t just process orders—they sent handwritten holiday cards to loyal customers, commissioned personalized pet portraits, and sent flowers when beloved pets died. These gestures were expensive and difficult to scale, but they created something quantifiable: extraordinary customer retention and willingness to pay premiums.

The funding journey tested Cohen’s conviction. Between 2011 and 2013, he pitched over 100 venture capital firms. Most saw a college dropout attempting to carve a niche in a market dominated by an unchallengeable competitor—a losing proposition by conventional metrics. In 2013, Volition Capital provided $15 million in Series A funding, validating Cohen’s thesis. By 2016, institutional investors including BlackRock and Prudential recognized the model’s validity. Annual revenues reached $900 million, with customer retention rates that exceeded industry benchmarks.

By 2018, Chewy’s transformation was complete. Revenue had climbed to $3.5 billion. PetSmart, seeking to acquire digital capabilities, offered $3.35 billion to acquire the company—the largest e-commerce acquisition of that era. At 31, Cohen possessed hundreds of millions in wealth. Rather than pursue greater growth, he chose family. He stepped down as CEO and repositioned himself as an investor in blue-chip companies like Apple (accumulating 1.55 million shares) and Wells Fargo, while establishing a family foundation dedicated to education and animal welfare.

The Strategic Return: GameStop’s Turnaround

In September 2020, while financial analysts wrote obituaries for GameStop—a brick-and-mortar video game retailer suffocating under digital distribution and streaming platforms—Ryan Cohen identified a different reality. The company possessed brand recognition among passionate gaming enthusiasts and a loyal customer base; management simply didn’t know how to leverage these assets.

Cohen’s investment vehicle, RC Ventures, disclosed a 10% stake, making him GameStop’s largest shareholder. Wall Street analysts were baffled. Why would an experienced entrepreneur invest in what seemed like a terminal retail business?

Cohen’s reasoning reflected his Chewy experience: GameStop wasn’t a traditional retailer competing on price and selection. It was a community hub for gaming culture enthusiasts who valued collectibles, trading cards, merchandise, and social connection. The problem was management treating it as a commodity business rather than a relationship-driven platform.

When Cohen joined the board in January 2021, retail investors began accumulating stock, triggering a historic short squeeze that pushed the price up 1,500% within weeks. While media obsessed over the “meme stock” phenomenon and retail-versus-hedge-fund narratives, Cohen focused on fundamentals.

His restructuring mirrored Chewy’s playbook: he purged the leadership team, replacing ten board members with executives from Amazon and Chewy who understood digital commerce architecture. He aggressively cut costs—eliminating redundant positions, closing underperforming stores, and eliminating expensive consulting contracts—while preserving every customer-facing function.

The financial transformation proved dramatic. Cohen inherited a company generating $5.1 billion in annual revenue while losing over $200 million yearly. After three years of methodical restructuring, GameStop achieved its first profitable year in 2023-2024. Despite a 25% revenue decline resulting from store closures, the company improved gross margins by 440 basis points and converted a $215 million annual loss into a $131 million profit. Smaller companies could achieve significant profitability if they eliminated inefficiency and maintained ruthless focus.

The strategy required patience. Physical retail stores would survive only if they offered genuine value. GameStop’s future lay in becoming an online platform serving gaming culture enthusiasts—not just selling video games but providing collectibles, merchandise, and community experiences. Cohen secured zero-dollar compensation as CEO (joining in September 2023), tying his wealth entirely to shareholder returns. His financial interest aligned perfectly with long-term value creation.

The Cryptocurrency Experiment and Strategic Pivot

GameStop’s initial venture into cryptocurrency reflected both the promise and peril of emerging technologies. In July 2022, the company launched an NFT marketplace focused on gaming-related digital collectibles. Early momentum appeared genuine: over $3.5 million in trading volume within the first 48 hours suggested authentic demand.

The NFT market’s collapse proved swift and devastating. Sales plummeted from $77.4 million in 2022 to just $2.8 million by 2023. GameStop discontinued its crypto wallet service in November 2023, citing regulatory uncertainty, and shuttered its NFT marketplace in February 2024. The failure could have permanently closed GameStop’s cryptocurrency chapter.

Instead, Cohen learned from the experience and developed a more mature digital asset strategy. Speculative NFT marketplaces weren’t the answer. But what about Bitcoin itself—not as a trading asset but as a treasury reserve?

Bitcoin as Strategic Reserve: The May 2025 Decision

The logic was straightforward. If global currency devaluation and systemic financial risk remained genuine possibilities, Bitcoin and gold both served as hedges against traditional currency collapse. Bitcoin possessed distinct advantages over physical gold: portability (instantaneous global transfer versus expensive shipping), authenticity verification (blockchain-based confirmation versus physical assay costs), storage efficiency (digital wallets versus physical vaults requiring insurance), and supply certainty (fixed 21-million-coin cap versus uncertain future gold supply from technological advancement).

On May 28, 2025, GameStop purchased 4,710 bitcoins for approximately $513 million—an average price of roughly $108,853 per coin. By February 2026, Bitcoin’s price had declined to $68.87K, placing the position in significant drawdown. Rather than panic selling, Cohen maintained conviction in the strategic thesis.

Critically, GameStop financed the purchase through convertible bond issuances rather than core capital reserves. The company retained over $4 billion in cash—a disciplined approach treating Bitcoin as a secondary strategic position rather than an all-in wager. In June 2025, GameStop exercised its convertible bond overallotment option, raising an additional $450 million (bringing total issuance to $2.7 billion), with explicit authorization to deploy funds toward Bitcoin and similar reserve assets consistent with the company’s investment policy.

Patient Capital and Long-Term Execution

The most unusual aspect of Ryan Cohen’s GameStop story involves the millions of retail investors who refuse to liquidate their positions. They call themselves “apes”—a self-reference reflecting their determination to hold regardless of traditional valuation metrics or analyst downgrade cascades. They don’t trade on earnings reports or price action. They hold because they believe in Cohen’s long-term vision and want to witness how it unfolds.

This represents “patient capital”—an almost unprecedented phenomenon in public markets. Most public company CEOs must satisfy quarterly profit expectations and mollify institutional investors focused on short-term returns. Cohen operates with a committed core shareholder base willing to tolerate volatility and apparent irrationality because they possess conviction in the underlying strategy. This freedom enables multiyear transformation initiatives impossible in traditional corporate environments.

The Ryan Cohen Framework: Strategy Execution Across Multiple Industries

Ryan Cohen’s trajectory reveals a consistent framework applicable across Chewy, GameStop, and now cryptocurrency treasury strategy: identify markets where incumbents neglected customer relationships; restructure for profitability rather than growth; build patient capital bases; and position for long-term structural shifts. Whether buying bitcoin or reviving a failing retailer, Ryan Cohen executes with methodical conviction, allowing results to speak rather than seeking validation through constant communication. This philosophy—combining financial discipline with strategic patience—explains why investors continue following his moves despite conventional wisdom predicting failure.