Part 1

It was the middle of the pandemic, and the silence in my house in Brockton, Massachusetts, was deafening. You know that kind of silence? It’s not peaceful. It’s heavy. It’s the sound of the world stopping, of paychecks shrinking, of the uncertainty gnawing at your gut while you look at your sleeping child.

I’m Keith. To the world, I became known as “Roaring Kitty,” the guy with the red headband and the cat posters. But before the madness, before the millions, and before the subpoenas, I was just a guy staring at a computer screen in my basement, terrified I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

I worked in insurance. I knew numbers. I knew risk. But what I did wasn’t calculated risk; it felt like insanity. I had taken $53,000—basically everything my wife, Caroline, and I had saved—and put it all into one stock: GameStop.

To the sharks on Wall Street, GameStop was a walking corpse. It was a brick-and-mortar dinosaur in a digital world, a relic of the past destined to die in the mall food courts of America. The big hedge funds, specifically Melvin Capital run by a guy named Gabe Plotkin in New York, were shorting it. That means they were betting billions that the company would fail. They didn’t just want it to drop; they wanted it to hit zero. They wanted to drive it into the ground, bankrupt it, and walk away with a tax-free fortune while thousands of employees lost their jobs.

That’s how the system works. They feast on the dying.

But I saw something they didn’t. I saw value. I saw a company that had been beaten down too far. More importantly, I saw that they had gotten greedy. They had “shorted” 140% of the available shares. Think about the math of that. They had sold more shares than actually existed. It was arrogance, pure and simple. They thought we—the retail investors, the regular people, the “dumb money”—would just roll over and die.

I remember sitting in my basement, the glow of the monitor lighting up my face, holding a cheap beer because that’s all I could justify buying. My hands were shaking. I posted my position on an online forum.

“I put it all in,” I typed.

The comments rolled in immediately. “You’re an idiot.” “Say goodbye to your money.” “RIP your marriage.”

My best friend called me. “Keith, are you crazy? Sell it. Get out now. Think about Caroline. Think about your daughter.”

I looked at the ceiling, feeling the crushing weight of responsibility. If I was wrong, we were done. No savings. No safety net in the middle of a global economic crisis. I could see the disappointment in my family’s eyes before it even happened. The fear of being just another failure, another guy who gambled and lost, was suffocating.

But then, I looked at Caroline. She knew. She saw the spreadsheets, the hours I spent analyzing the data until my eyes burned. She didn’t scream. She didn’t threaten to leave. She looked at me and said, “If you believe in it, Keith, then hold. Let’s see what happens.”

So, I turned on my webcam. I put on that ridiculous red headband to hide the sweat on my forehead. I started streaming.

“I like the stock,” I said. It was a whisper against a hurricane.

At first, the stock dropped. My $53,000 started to shrink. The hedge funds were laughing. They were celebrating in their penthouses, probably popping champagne while regular folks were counting coupons.

But then, something shifted. It wasn’t just me anymore.

People started listening. Not the experts on CNBC, but the people who had been left behind. I got a message from a nurse in Ohio. She was drowning in debt, working double shifts in the COVID ward, watching people d*e every day while the rich got richer. She took her paycheck and bought GameStop. I heard from a college student in Texas whose father lost his job when a hedge fund stripped his company for parts. He put his tuition money in. I heard from a guy who was working at a GameStop, wondering if he’d have a job next week. He bought in.

It wasn’t about the money anymore. It was about anger. It was about a decade of being stepped on, ignored, and mocked. We were the “chives” ready to be harvested by the big money. But this time, the chives were fighting back.

We realized that if we just held on—if we had “Diamond Hands”—we could trap them. If we refused to sell, they couldn’t cover their bets. They would have to buy from us, at whatever price we set.

The stock ticked up. $4. Then $10. Then $20.

I watched my account balance swell. I had made money. Life-changing money. My family was screaming at me, “Sell, Keith! Take the win!”

But I looked at the data. The hedge funds hadn’t covered yet. They were bleeding, losing billions a day. Gabe Plotkin was panicking. I could feel their fear all the way from New York. They had never been challenged by the little guys before.

I had a choice to make. I could cash out now, secure my family’s future, and walk away a hero. Or, I could hold. I could hold the line for the nurse, for the student, for the retail worker. I could hold and force the system to break.

I poured another beer. I looked at the camera.

“I’m not selling,” I said.

And that’s when the war truly began. That’s when they came for me. That’s when the apps stopped working, the lawsuits started flying, and the world turned upside down.

Part 2

The numbers on the screen weren’t just digits anymore. They were a heartbeat. Every tick upward was a pulse of adrenaline; every dip was a punch to the gut. $20. $40. $70.

I sat there in my basement in Brockton, the unfinished walls closing in on me, staring at an account balance that looked like a glitch. My $53,000 investment—the money that was supposed to fix the roof, pay for my daughter’s future tuition, give us a safety net—had mutated. It was growing so fast my brain couldn’t process the commas.

My wife, Caroline, came down the stairs. She was holding a basket of laundry, her face pale. She stood behind me, looking at the monitors.

“Keith,” she whispered. Her voice trembled. “Is that… real?”

On the screen, the portfolio value hovered at over $5 million.

Five. Million. Dollars.

I spun around in my cheap office chair, the wheels grinding against the concrete floor. “It’s real,” I said, my mouth dry. “But it’s not ours. Not yet. I haven’t sold.”

She dropped the laundry basket. “You haven’t sold? Keith, that is life-changing money. That is ‘never work again’ money. That is ‘move out of this basement’ money. What are you waiting for?”

I couldn’t explain it to her. How do you explain that selling now would feel like betrayal? Not just a betrayal of my own thesis, but a betrayal of the thousands of people who were standing in the virtual trenches with me.

I opened the Reddit forum. It was chaos. Beautiful, terrifying chaos.

The movement had exploded. It wasn’t just investors anymore; it was a crusade. I scrolled through thousands of comments, tears actually welling up in my eyes.

There was a post from a guy in Michigan: “My dad lost our home in 2008 because of these hedge funds. They drank champagne on the balcony while we slept in a van. I have $500 to my name. It’s all in $GME. I’m not selling until they feel what we felt.”

Another from a single mom in Atlanta: “I work three jobs. I’m tired. I bought two shares. This is for my kids.”

I realized then that I wasn’t the leader of an army. I was just the guy holding the flag. If I dropped it, if I sold and ran away with my millions, the morale would shatter. The hedge funds would win. Again.

---

Meanwhile, in the high-rise glass towers of Manhattan, the atmosphere was very different.

Gabe Plotkin, the wunderkind of Wall Street, the man who ran Melvin Capital, was reportedly losing his mind. He was the “Michael Jordan” of short selling. He was a genius in a $5,000 suit. But he had made a fatal error. He looked at GameStop and saw a dying Blockbuster. He didn’t see the people.

Every dollar the stock went up, Melvin Capital lost millions. It was a mathematical vice grip. When you short a stock, your losses are theoretically infinite. If the stock goes to $1,000, you owe the difference. If it goes to $10,000, you owe the difference.

We were bleeding them dry.

The news started to turn on us. I turned on the TV in the corner of the room. A famous financial anchor was red-faced, practically shouting at the camera.

“These are unsophisticated investors!” he yelled. “They are gambling! This is a mob attack on the financial system! They are destroying the pension funds!”

I laughed, a hollow, exhausted sound. They called us predators? Us? The people buying stocks with stimulus checks and overtime pay? They had been predatory shorting companies for decades, driving businesses into the ground to make a quick buck, and nobody batted an eye. But the moment the “dumb money” figured out the rules of the game, suddenly it was “unfair.”

My phone buzzed. It was my brother, Kevin.

“Bro,” he shouted over the line. “You’re on CNN. They’re talking about ‘Roaring Kitty.’ They know who you are. The Daily Mail is parked outside Mom’s house.”

My stomach dropped. The anonymity was gone. I wasn’t just a username anymore. I was Keith Gill. And I had a target on my back.

“Check on Mom,” I said, my voice shaking. “Tell her not to answer the door. Tell her I’m sorry.”

The pressure was physical now. I stopped eating. I couldn’t sleep. I would lie in bed next to Caroline, staring at the ceiling, doing math in my head.

If I sell now, I have $11 million. If I hold, and the price drops to $20, I have nothing. I’m the idiot who rode the rocket up and rode it all the way down into the crater.

But the next morning, I went back to the basement. I put on the red headband. I posted my update.

GME Portfolio: $22,000,000.

Cash on hand: $13,000.

I didn’t sell a single share.

The internet went nuclear. “IF HE’S STILL IN, I’M STILL IN!” became the chant heard around the world.

---

Then came January 28th. The day the music died.

The stock opened at $265. Within minutes, it hit $300. Then $400. It touched $483.

The hedge funds were on the ropes. Melvin Capital needed a bailout. Billions were evaporating. We had them. It was a “short squeeze” in the purest sense. They had to buy the shares back to close their positions, but we weren’t selling, and the price was going to infinity.

I was sitting there, watching the chart go vertical, feeling a sense of vindication that I can’t even describe. We were winning. The little guys were actually winning.

And then, the impossible happened.

I tried to buy a few more shares, just to show support. I clicked “Buy” on my trading app.

Error.

“This stock is not supported on Robinhood.”

I frowned. I refreshed the page.

“Position Close Only.”

I froze. I stared at the words, unable to comprehend them. Position Close Only.

That meant we could sell. But we couldn’t buy.

Imagine playing a game of poker, and right when you lay down the winning hand, the casino boss walks over and says, “Sorry, you can’t bet anymore. You can only fold.”

It wasn’t just Robinhood. It was E-Trade, Webull, all the major apps that retail investors used. They had simultaneously pulled the plug.

Panic. Pure, unadulterated panic swept through the forums.

“Why can’t I buy?!”

“They turned off the buy button!”

“Is this legal?!”

“They’re manipulating the market right in front of our eyes!”

Without new buyers, the demand vanished instantly. But the sellers—the hedge funds—were allowed to keep shorting. They were allowed to keep driving the price down. It was a massacre.

I watched in horror as the stock price plummeted.

$480…

$300…

$190…

$120…

In hours, millions of dollars in potential gains were wiped out. Not just for me, but for everyone.

The nurse in Ohio? Her account, which had shown enough money to pay off her student loans that morning, was now in the red.

The student in Texas? He was looking at a loss that would bankrupt him.

I felt sick. Physically sick. I ran to the bathroom and dry-heaved over the toilet. This wasn’t a market correction. This was theft. This was the system protecting its own. They realized they were going to lose, so they flipped the board over.

My phone blew up with messages.

“Keith, what do we do?”

“Did you sell?”

“Tell us you got out at the top.”

I sat back in my chair, trembling. My portfolio had dropped by $13 million in a single day. Thirteen. Million. Dollars. Gone.

Caroline came downstairs. She didn’t say anything. She just put a hand on my shoulder. She knew. We had flown too close to the sun, and the sun had decided to slap us down.

“They’re cheating,” I said, my voice cracking. “They’re actually cheating.”

“I know,” she said softly. “So what are you going to do?”

That was the question. If I sold now, I could still walk away with a few million. I could save myself. But if I sold now, I would validate everything the media said about us. That we were weak. That we were “dumb money.” That we would fold the moment things got tough.

But there was something else. A darker shadow looming.

The next day, a courier arrived at my door. A thick envelope.

SUBPOENA.

Congress of the United States.

House Committee on Financial Services.

I stared at the seal of the United States government.

They weren’t investigating the hedge funds that over-shorted the company. They weren’t investigating the apps that illegally blocked trading.

They were investigating me.

They wanted to know if I had manipulated the market. They wanted to know if I was a mastermind, a con artist, a cult leader.

I was just a guy who liked a stock.

I walked into the kitchen and threw the subpoena on the table. The silence in the house was heavy again, but this time, it was filled with fear. Real fear.

“They want me to testify,” I told Caroline. “In Washington. On live TV.”

“Against who?” she asked.

“Against everyone,” I said. “Ken Griffin from Citadel. Vlad Tenev from Robinhood. Gabe Plotkin from Melvin. The billionaires. The guys who own the world.”

She sat down, looking at the paper. “They’re going to try to destroy you, Keith. You know that, right? They need a scapegoat. They can’t blame the system, so they’re going to blame the guy in the red headband.”

She was right. I was the perfect villain for their narrative. A recklessly irresponsible streamer who led innocent people to their financial d*ath.

I went back to the basement, but I didn’t turn on the stream. I couldn’t. My lawyers—I had to hire lawyers now, expensive ones, draining the cash I barely had—told me to go dark. No more tweets. No more memes. No more “Roaring Kitty.”

I sat in the dark, listening to the hum of the computer servers. The stock had stabilized, but it was low. The momentum was broken. The “short squeeze” had been strangled in the crib by the powers that be.

People were angry. The mood online had shifted from hope to rage. They felt betrayed by the system, and some of them were starting to doubt me.

“He definitely sold,” one comment read. “He’s probably laughing at us from a yacht while we hold the bag.”

That hurt more than the lost money. The idea that I would abandon them.

I looked at the camera lens, black and lifeless. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell them, I’m still here! I’m bleeding with you! But I was silenced.

I had to prepare for Congress. I had to sit in front of the most powerful people in the country and explain why I believed in a video game store.

I spent the next week preparing. It was a blur of legal prep, anxiety attacks, and watching the news drag my name through the mud. They dug up everything. My old track times from college. My previous jobs. They analyzed my tweets like they were coded messages from a terrorist.

But amidst the darkness, something happened.

A billboard went up in Times Square. Then another in Los Angeles. Then one in Oklahoma.

$GME.

WE LIKE THE STOCK.

CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP, GAMESTOP.

The people hadn’t given up. Even with the buy button turned off, even with the price crashed, even with the media calling them idiots… they were holding. They were buying whatever they could on other platforms.

They weren’t doing it for the money anymore. They were doing it out of spite. They were holding the line because it was the only way to say “F*** You” to the people who had rigged the game for so long.

I realized then that this wasn’t about a trade. It was a class war. And I had accidentally fired the first shot.

The night before the hearing, I couldn’t sleep. I sat in my daughter’s room, watching her chest rise and fall as she slept. She had no idea her dad was about to become the face of financial rebellion. She had no idea we might lose everything if the government decided to make an example out of me.

I went to my desk and pulled out a blank sheet of paper. I had to write my opening statement. The lawyers had given me a script—safe, corporate, boring. Legal jargon designed to keep me out of jail.

I read it. It sounded like a robot. It sounded like them.

I crumpled it up and threw it in the trash.

If I was going to go down, I was going to go down as myself. I was going to speak for the nurse in Ohio. For the student in Texas. For the guy whose dad lost the house in 2008.

I picked up a pen.

“My name is Keith Gill,” I wrote. “I am not a cat.”

The next morning, I put on a suit. But I kept the red headband in my pocket, a secret talisman. I set up the camera. The whole world was watching. The Zoom link connected.

There were the faces of the titans.

Ken Griffin, the billionaire owner of Citadel, looking like a statue in a room that cost more than my entire neighborhood.

Vlad Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood, looking pale and sweaty.

Gabe Plotkin, the man I had bankrupted, looking defeated.

And then there was me. In my squeaky chair. In front of a poster of a kitten hanging in there.

“Mr. Gill,” the Chairwoman said. “You may begin.”

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. This was it. The climax of the insanity.

I took a breath. I looked into the lens, imagining the millions of people watching on their phones, praying I wouldn’t sell them out.

“Thank you, Chairwoman,” I began. I looked straight at the camera, ignoring the billionaires, ignoring the lawyers screaming in my earpiece to stick to the script.

I started to tell them the truth. Not the Wall Street version. My truth.

But as I spoke, I knew the real test was coming. The question everyone wanted to know. The question that would determine if I was a hero or a fraud.

Congressman Huizenga leaned into his microphone, his eyes narrowing.

“Mr. Gill,” he asked, his voice echoing in my cheap headphones. “You caused a frenzy. You encouraged people to buy this stock at $400. The price is now $40. People have lost their life savings because of you. Do you regret it? Would you buy this stock right now, at this price?”

The room went silent. The lawyers held their breath.

If I said yes, I was doubling down on “manipulation.”

If I said no, I was admitting I was wrong, and the movement would die instantly.

I looked at the price ticker on my second monitor. GameStop was trading at $45.

I thought about the $13 million I had “lost.” I thought about the threats. I thought about the nurse.

I looked the Congressman in the eye.

“Sir,” I said, my voice steady for the first time in weeks. “I am not a financial advisor. I am an individual investor.”

I paused. The silence stretched.

“But… to answer your question…”

The world held its breath.

Part 3

The Hearing and The Double Down

The silence in that virtual room was heavier than anything I had ever felt in my life. It wasn’t just silence; it was a vacuum. I was sitting in my basement in Brockton, Massachusetts, surrounded by unfinished drywall and cheap insulation, staring into a camera lens that connected me to the most powerful financial committee on Earth.

Congressman Huizenga was waiting. The billionaires—Ken Griffin, Vlad Tenev, Gabe Plotkin—were watching from their ivory towers, their faces composed masks of expensive skin care and legal coaching. They expected me to fold. They expected the “dumb money” guy to stutter, to apologize, to admit that this was all a mistake, a joke, a reckless gamble that got out of hand.

“Would you buy this stock right now, at this price?”

The question hung in the air like a guillotine blade.

If I said “No,” I was admitting defeat. I was admitting that the stock was worthless, that the movement was a delusion, and that I had led millions of people off a cliff. The price would crash to zero instantly. The narrative would be written: Internet troll admits he was wrong.

If I said “Yes,” I was painting a target on my back so big that the SEC, the DOJ, and every lawyer in New York would be firing at me for market manipulation.

I looked at the price ticker on my side monitor. $45. GameStop had lost 90% of its value from the peak. The media had already written our obituaries. “The GameStop frenzy is over,” they said. “The bubble has burst.”

I took a deep breath. I thought about the nurse in Ohio. I thought about my dad, a truck driver who worked his fingers to the bone and never got ahead. I thought about the sheer arrogance of the men on the other squares of the Zoom call—men who treated the American economy like their personal casino, rigging the slot machines so they always paid out to the house.

I looked straight into the camera.

“In short,” I said, my voice steady, cutting through the static. “I like the stock.”

The words hit the stream like a thunderclap.

I didn’t stop there. “I am as bullish as I have ever been on a potential turnaround for GameStop. In short, I like the stock. And what’s more… I believe the current price is an attractive entry point.”

I saw a flicker of something in Ken Griffin’s eyes. Was it annoyance? Fear? Disbelief? He blinked, shifting slightly in his ergonomically perfect chair. For the first time in history, the little guy wasn’t apologizing. The little guy was doubling down.

The hearing continued for hours, but the war was already won in that single moment. They grilled me. They asked me if I was a financial advisor (I reminded them, again, that I was not). They asked if I conspired with others (I reminded them I just posted memes and spreadsheets). They tried to paint me as a predator, but the more I spoke, the more I sounded like exactly what I was: a nerd who did his homework.

While the CEOs read from teleprompters, sounding like robots programmed by legal teams, I spoke from the heart.

“I grew up playing video games and shopping at GameStop,” I told them. “I believe in the company’s potential to reinvent itself. Investing can be risky, and my particular approach to investing is aggressive and may not be suitable for anyone else. But for me? I like the stock.”

When the camera finally turned off, I slumped back in my chair. My shirt was soaked through with sweat. My hands were trembling so hard I couldn’t hold my water bottle.

“You did it,” Caroline said, coming into the room. She had been listening from the stairs, terrified. “You didn’t let them break you.”

“I didn’t,” I whispered. “But it’s not over.”

The media spin began immediately. They analyzed every word. They mocked my “I am not a cat” joke—a reference to a viral Zoom lawyer video that I used to break the tension. They tried to frame my optimism as delusion.

The stock price hovered. The world was waiting to see if I was all talk. It’s one thing to tell Congress you like a stock; it’s another thing to put your money where your mouth is when you’ve already “lost” millions on paper.

The next day, February 19th, 2021, I sat at my desk. The legal bills were piling up. The stress was eating me alive. I looked at my bank account. I had cash left—cash that was supposed to be safe. Cash that was supposed to ensure my family never had to worry again.

But if I didn’t act, everything we fought for meant nothing. The narrative would be that “Roaring Kitty” talked a big game but secretly cashed out or sat on the sidelines.

I opened my brokerage account. My hands hovered over the keyboard.

I wasn’t just holding. I was buying.

I placed an order for 50,000 more shares.

Fifty. Thousand.

I spent nearly every liquid dollar I had available to buy back into the company that Wall Street said was dead. I brought my total ownership to 100,000 shares.

I took a screenshot. I opened Reddit. I posted the update.

Title: Double Down.

The internet broke. Again.

I sat there refreshing the page, watching the comments flood in at a speed that was impossible to read.

“THE MADMAN DID IT!”

“HE BOUGHT MORE?!”

“LEGEND.”

“IF HE’S STILL IN, I’M STILL IN.”

It wasn’t about the money anymore. It was a signal fire. It was a message to every hedge fund manager in Manhattan: We are not leaving. You can turn off the buy button, you can drag us before Congress, you can manipulate the media, but you cannot break our will.

That single screenshot was the turning point. The despair that had plagued the retail investors for weeks evaporated. The “paper hands” (people who sell out of fear) were gone; only the “diamond hands” remained.

And then, the stock started to move.

It didn’t happen immediately. It simmered for a few days. But on February 24th, the volcano erupted again.

I was eating a sandwich in the kitchen when my phone started vibrating so hard it nearly fell off the table.

GME: $50… $60… $90…

It halted. Volatility pause.

Ten minutes later, it reopened.

GME: $120… $150… $180.

In the span of a few hours, the stock price tripled. Then it quadrupled.

I ran downstairs. The chart was a vertical green line. It looked like a glitch. It looked like the heartbeat of a giant waking up.

The hedge funds who thought they had crushed us? They were trapped again. They had doubled down on their short positions when the price was low, thinking we were dead. Now, they were facing a second annihilation.

I watched my account balance swing by millions of dollars in seconds. Up $5 million. Down $3 million. Up $8 million.

This time, I didn’t feel fear. I felt pure, unadulterated vindication. They said we were wrong. They said we were dumb. But the market doesn’t lie.

The “Second Squeeze” was different from the first. The first was fueled by hype and surprise. The second was fueled by conviction. It was the market realizing that GameStop wasn’t going bankrupt anytime soon because it had millions of loyal shareholders who would refuse to let it die.

I remember standing in the middle of my basement, laughing. Just laughing. It was a hysterical, exhausted laugh.

“We were right,” I said to the empty room. “We were right.”

But the climax wasn’t just the money. It was the realization of what we had exposed.

We had exposed that the market wasn’t free.

We had exposed that the media was a mouthpiece for the wealthy.

We had exposed that if regular people work together, they are more powerful than any institution.

My brother came over that night. We stood in the driveway, looking at the snow in Massachusetts.

“You know you’re going into the history books, right?” he said. “Like, financial history books. Chapter one: The Cat in the Bandana.”

“I just like the stock,” I said, popping open a beer.

“So, are you going to sell now?” he asked. “You have… what? Thirty million dollars?”

I took a sip of beer. I looked at the stars.

“Not yet,” I said. “I have one more move to make.”

The world thought the climax was the hearing. They thought it was the second price spike. But the true climax was the “Final Yolo.”

I waited until April. The stock was stabilizing around $150—a price that was unimaginable just months prior. I had options contracts set to expire. These were the contracts I had bought over a year ago for pennies. They were now worth a fortune.

Most people would sell the contracts, take the cash, and run. It’s the safe move.

But I didn’t want the cash. I wanted the shares.

I exercised the options. I bought the shares at the strike price of $12.

And then, I bought even more.

On April 16, 2021, I posted my final update.

200,000 Shares.

Value: $30,930,000.

I had quadrupled my position from the start of the year. I was all in. Again.

The caption was simple: “Cheers everyone!”

It was a video of me raising a glass of champagne, clinking it against the camera lens.

And then… I disappeared.

Part 4

Epilogue: The Silence and The Legacy

After that final post, I went dark. No more streams. No more tweets. No more memes.

The “Roaring Kitty” account went dormant.

It wasn’t because I was hiding. It was because the story didn’t belong to me anymore. It belonged to the “Apes”—the millions of people across the United States and the world who had taken the torch.

I spent the first few months just trying to decompress. My nervous system was fried. For a year, I had lived with cortisol levels that would kill a horse.

I remember the first morning I woke up and didn’t immediately check the pre-market price. I lay in bed, listening to the birds chirp outside my window in Massachusetts. The sun was shining. My daughter was giggling in the next room.

I was rich.

It’s a strange word to say. Rich.

I wasn’t “buy a yacht” rich like the guys I fought against. I didn’t want a yacht. I didn’t want a penthouse in New York.

We bought a new house. A nice one, with a big yard for the kids and a real office for me—no more basement broadcasts. I bought my brother a car. I set up trust funds for my nieces and nephews.

But the biggest luxury wasn’t the stuff. It was the freedom.

I walked into a grocery store in Brockton one day, wearing a mask and a hat so nobody would recognize me. I looked at the prices of meat, of milk, of diapers. And for the first time in my adult life, I realized I didn’t have to do the mental math. I didn’t have to worry if buying the good steak would mean we couldn’t pay the electric bill.

That is what financial freedom is. It’s the absence of that constant, low-level hum of anxiety that 99% of Americans live with every single day.

While I was enjoying the quiet, the fallout of the war continued to rain down on Wall Street.

Melvin Capital, the fund run by Gabe Plotkin, the man who bet everything against GameStop, never recovered. They had lost billions—over 50% of their value—in a single month. They tried to limp along for another year, but the damage was terminal. In 2022, Melvin Capital shut its doors forever.

The “dumb money” had defeated the “smart money.” We had taken down a titan.

Robinhood, the app that turned off the buy button, went public. But they were tainted. Their reputation was in tatters. They faced lawsuit after lawsuit. Their stock price plummeted after the IPO, losing nearly 90% of its value. It was poetic justice. The platform that betrayed its users was abandoned by them.

And GameStop? The company didn’t die. Because of the share price increase, they were able to sell new stock and raise nearly $2 billion in cash. They paid off their debts. They started to pivot. We saved the company. We saved the jobs of the guy working the counter at the mall in Topeka and the warehouse worker in Kentucky.

Sometimes, late at night, I log onto the old forums with a burner account, just to read.

The community is still there. They are still digging, still analyzing, still fighting for fair markets. They uncovered the “dark pools” where hedge funds hide their trades. They lobbied the SEC for transparency. They became the most educated retail investors in history.

I saw a post recently from that nurse in Ohio. She paid off her debt. She took a vacation for the first time in five years. She posted a picture of herself on a beach, holding a drink.

The caption read: “Thanks, Kitty.”

I stared at that screen for a long time, smiling.

That was worth more than the $30 million.

But there is a bittersweet side to it all. The system didn’t completely change. The rich are still rich. Citadel is still making billions. The game is still rigged, just slightly less than before.

People ask me if I regret the stress. If I regret the target on my back.

I think about the alternative. I think about staying in that basement, wishing I had done something. Wishing I had spoken up.

I don’t regret a second of it.

I learned that the stock market isn’t just a graph of numbers. It’s a graph of human psychology. It’s fear and greed, hope and despair, arrogance and humility.

And I learned that the most powerful force in the world isn’t a hedge fund algorithm. It’s a community of people who decide they have had enough.

Three years later, in 2024, the itch started to come back. The charts looked… interesting again. The fractals were aligning. The company was sitting on a mountain of cash.

I opened my old Twitter account. I found a picture of a gamer leaning forward in his chair—the universal symbol for “things are getting serious.”

I hovered over the “Post” button.

My wife walked in. She saw the screen. She saw the look in my eye—the same look I had in 2020.

“Keith,” she said, a warning tone in her voice. “Are you really going to do this again?”

I looked at her. I grinned.

“I think I might,” I said.

I clicked Post.

The internet exploded one more time.

Because the story isn’t over. The game never stops. And as long as there are people willing to bet against the little guy, there will be people like me, sitting in basements, looking at the data, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

I’m Keith Gill. I’m not a cat. I’m just an investor.

And I still like the stock.

THE END.