From Pet Food Empire to Bitcoin Believer: How Ryan Cohen Built GameStop Into a Crypto-Savvy Institution

When Ryan Cohen quietly disclosed GameStop’s $513 million bitcoin purchase in May 2025—4,710 BTC acquired through SEC filings rather than press releases—few realized they were witnessing the culmination of a decade-long pattern: a visionary entrepreneur betting against the consensus while everyone else remained skeptical.

The Blueprint of a Contrarian

Cohen’s journey defies traditional startup mythology. Born in Montreal in 1986, he rejected the conventional path early, launching his first e-commerce venture at 15 when most peers believed the internet was a fad. His father Ted, who ran an import business, instilled a philosophy that would define Cohen’s career: view business relationships as long-term partnerships, not transactional exchanges.

By 25, Cohen had already absorbed the fundamentals of customer acquisition and revenue generation—credentials he parlayed into founding Chewy in 2011. At a time when Amazon seemed unbeatable, Cohen identified an underserved emotional niche: pet owners who viewed their animals as family members requiring empathy, not just commerce. The strategy worked. Chewy’s handwritten holiday cards, pet portraits, and sympathy flowers for deceased pets transformed customer retention rates into an economic moat competitors couldn’t replicate.

Between 2011 and 2013, Cohen experienced what most founders couldn’t survive: over 100 venture capital rejections. Yet persistence mattered. A $15 million Series A from Volition Capital in 2013 proved the thesis. By 2018, when PetSmart acquired Chewy for $3.35 billion—then the largest e-commerce acquisition in history—Cohen had proven his net worth extended far beyond balance sheets: it reflected his ability to identify human needs beneath market noise.

The Unexpected Pivot to Gaming

At 31, with substantial wealth secured, Cohen made a counterintuitive choice: he stepped away from Chewy to focus on family life. For three years, he invested passively in blue-chip holdings while serving as a board member and philanthropist. This intermission proved temporary.

In September 2020, when Wall Street had written GameStop’s obituary as a brick-and-mortar relic, Cohen’s RC Ventures acquired nearly 10% of the struggling video game retailer. Analysts were baffled. But Cohen recognized what they missed: GameStop possessed cultural currency and passionate customers—assets management had systematically squandered.

His reconstruction mirrored the Chewy playbook. First, leadership purge: ten board members replaced by Amazon and Chewy veterans. Second, ruthless efficiency cuts while preserving all customer-facing operations. The results spoke loudly: Cohen inherited a company bleeding $215 million annually with $5.1 billion in revenue. Three years later, despite a 25% revenue decline from store closures, he engineered GameStop’s first profitable year, posting a $131 million gain and expanding gross margins by 440 basis points.

Bitcoin as Institutional Validation

GameStop’s 2022 NFT marketplace launch generated $3.5 million in trading volume within 48 hours, signaling genuine demand for gaming-related digital assets. The subsequent market collapse—plummeting from $77.4 million in 2022 to $2.8 million in 2023—could have permanently deterred the company from crypto. Instead, Cohen learned and evolved.

On May 28, 2025, GameStop announced the acquisition of 4,710 bitcoins, positioned the company as the 14th largest corporate holder globally. Unlike speculative all-in bets, this move funded through convertible bonds while maintaining over $4 billion in core reserves. Cohen’s reasoning: bitcoin’s fixed supply, instant transferability, and blockchain verification create a superior hedge against currency devaluation compared to traditional alternatives like gold.

With BTC currently trading at $92.81K, GameStop’s stake represents a calculated institutional wager on digital assets as systemic risk insurance.

The Power of Patient Capital

What distinguishes Cohen’s trajectory is the unprecedented “meme army” of retail investors—self-described “apes”—who refuse conventional exit strategies. They hold not on earnings reports or analyst ratings, but faith in Cohen’s vision. This patient capital freed Cohen from quarterly performance theater, allowing long-term strategic positioning that traditional CEOs cannot execute.

Cohen’s compensation structure reinforces this alignment: zero salary, all upside tied to stock performance. He wins only when shareholders profit—a rare alignment of incentives that explains his willingness to make decisions that perplex Wall Street in the moment but compound over years.

GameStop follows GameStop’s strategy, not the market’s narrative. This philosophical consistency—whether acquiring pet food customers’ loyalty or bitcoin reserves—defines why Ryan Cohen’s net worth remains tied less to any single transaction than to a repeatable methodology of identifying optionality where others see obsolescence.