He owns 13.5 million Class A shares, or 8.5% of that class, while GoPro founder Nicholas Woodman owns roughly 14.6% of total shares and controls about 63% of the voting power through Class B shares.
Tokenized shares of GoPro, the action camera maker whose stock has suddenly become one of Wall Street's stranger trades, went live on Solana through Sunrise on Tuesday, just hours after the company unveiled a deal that could radically reshape its business.
- The GPRO token is issued by Backpack Securities rather than GoPro itself and trades around the clock on Solana.
- Backpack's tokenized stock model allows its securities to move between traditional brokerage infrastructure and blockchain tokens redeemable for the underlying shares.
- And the timing is quite noteworthy. The token arrived in the middle of a sudden frenzy around a company that, until days ago, was trading below $1 and warning investors about its financial condition.
"Hello everybody, my name is Markiplier"
Mark Fischbach, the hugely popular gaming YouTuber better known as Markiplier, who has nearly 40 million subscribers, disclosed ownership of 13.5 million GoPro Class A shares, representing 8.5% of that share class, making him the company's largest disclosed individual Class A shareholder, according to an SEC filing.
- Attention around his investment helped send GoPro shares up about 46% on Monday.
- The shares jumped another roughly 40% on Tuesday to close at around $1.2 as an even bigger catalyst landed: GoPro had found a merger partner.
But GoPro needed more than a viral investor
Behind the frenzy sits a company that has been struggling for years. GoPro generated about $651.5 million in revenue last year, down roughly 20%, while posting an operating loss of more than $83 million.
Its Q2 revenue this year fell another 31% to roughly $105 million, while its net loss widened to $51 million from about $16 million a year earlier, per regulatory filings.
- Competition, particularly from Chinese rivals such as DJI and Insta360, weaker consumer demand, rising memory costs and delayed product launches have all weighed on the business.
- GoPro had just $27.3 million of cash against $87.2 million of principal debt at the end of June.
Its latest quarterly filing went considerably further as GoPro said there remained "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue as a going concern without additional financing or a strategic transaction.
The board had already launched a strategic review in May that explicitly included a possible sale or merger.
A $285 million way out
That process produced Starman Optical, a privately held U.S. photonics company. Under the deal announced on Tuesday, Sept. 1, GoPro shareholders are expected to receive an aggregate $285 million in cash, or roughly $1.1 per share subject to adjustment, while retaining roughly 10% of the combined company. About $92 million of GoPro debt is expected to be repaid at closing.
The combined company is expected to remain listed on Nasdaq and keep selling its cameras, subscriptions and cloud services.
But Starman would push it far beyond helmet cameras.
- The companies plan to combine GoPro's imaging technology and portfolio of more than 2,500 U.S. patents with Starman's optical-transceiver business to pursue AI data centers, defense, government, robotics and aerospace markets.
- The deal still requires GoPro shareholder and regulatory approval and is expected to close by the end of the year.
And now it trades on Solana
Into all of that came Backpack's tokenized GPRO. Sunrise, a Wormhole Labs-built asset gateway that brings tokenized securities and other assets onto Solana, listed the Backpack-issued GPRO token on Tuesday.
But that also gives the token an unusually quick corporate-action test. Backpack says tokenized securities can be converted back into traditional security entitlements, while its own documentation notes that treatment of mergers and other corporate actions can depend on the platform structure, legal terms and the specific transaction.
- Backpack hasn't publicly detailed how the newly launched GPRO token would be handled if GoPro's cash-plus-equity merger closes.
- The Coinformer reached out to Backpack and will update the story once and if hears back.