Bed Bath & Beyond went bankrupt and sold its brand. That hasn't stopped meme-stock fans from trading over $200 million of its shares in recent weeks.

• Bed Bath & Beyond went bankrupt and sold its brand, but people are still placing bets on its stock.
• Investors have traded over $200 million worth of its likely worthless shares since early May.

Bed Bath & Beyond may have filed for bankruptcy and sold its brand name, but fans of the meme stock aren't giving up on it just yet. They've traded over $200 million worth of the homewares retailer's shares since early May, Yahoo Finance data shows, even though they're most likely worthless.

BBBY stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on May 3, and now trades on the over-the-counter (OTC) market. Investors have traded an average of 24 million shares a day since then, per Yahoo Finance.

Anthony Chukumba, a Loop Capital Markets analyst who previously covered the retailer, described the phenomenon to the Financial Times as "almost a mutation" of the meme-stock craze. A fair stock price for Tesla, GameStop, and other popular companies is up for debate, he continued, but that's not the case for BBBY following its bankruptcy.

When leftover cash is distributed at the end of the bankruptcy process, bondholders are typically prioritized over stockholders. BBBY bonds are trading for virtually nothing now, signaling the company's shares are almost certainly worth nothing as well, the FT reported.

Moreover, Overstock.com recently purchased BBBY's intellectual property for $22 million, and plans to rebrand itself under the Bed Bath & Beyond name. Without its well-known brand, the bankrupt retailer is even less likely to stage a miraculous comeback.

Regardless of the company's bleak outlook and the fact its shares are probably worthless, meme-stock fans have more than tripled BBBY's stock price since its delisting. They have done so without a clear nemesis — a key driver of the meme-stock boom in early 2021 was a burning desire among retail investors to punish the greedy Wall Street types who were betting against beaten-down companies.

"There are no institutions shorting Bed Bath at 25 cents," Chukumba told the FT. "There's no 'man' to stick it to any more."