I think there was more to it than that. It seemed more like a situation where they could kill two birds with one stone. They could destroy, or at least severely damage the stock market by ensuring the hedgefunds couldn’t buy back the shorted stock, and even if they didn’t, they had the chance to become extremely wealthy while trying.

It probably would have worked too if it weren’t for those meddling kids stock brokers like Robin Hood working with hedgefunds to claw back stocks and the SEC towering over them with potential charges of market manipulation.