Alexis Ohanian says GameStop stock market war is ‘seminal moment’ for finance

Reddit has found itself at the centre of a stock market war of attrition, as investors from its WallStreetBets forum attempt to "shot squeeze" a group of hedge funds attempting to short sell GameStop stocks.

Reddit investors banded together to buy up GameStop stocks, sending the share price soaring more than 2,000 per cent over the last month, which could force short selling hedge funds to have to buy back their GameStop stocks at exorbitantly inflated prices. The hedge funds stand to lose billions of dollars in the exchange.

Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, told CNBC's Squawk Box that the battle represented a turning point in American trading norms.

“I do think this is a seminal moment. I don’t think we go back to a world before this because these communities, they’re a byproduct of the connected internet,” he said. “Whether it’s one platform or another, this is the new normal.”