By Alexandra
AMC, the world’s largest cinema chain, said it plans to accept a range of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin for movie-ticket and concession purchases.
AMC boss Adam Aron broke the news via Twitter on Wednesday, writing: “Cryptocurrency enthusiasts: you likely know @AMCTheatres has announced we will accept Bitcoin for online ticket and concession payments by year-end 2021. I can confirm today that when we do so, we also expect that we similarly will accept Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.”
The company had previously said in August that it would accept Bitcoin for online ticket and concession purchases by the end of 2021.
The price of Bitcoin on Wednesday was little changed, while both Ethereum and Litecoin rose over 3 percent.
AMC’s shares, one of the so-called “meme stocks”, were up nearly 1 percent in early-day trading Thursday. AMC’s stock has been on a wild ride this year, thanks to an army of retail traders that began playing the stock market during the pandemic on no-commission trading platforms like Robinhood.
Meme stock traders famously targeted GameStop earlier this year and have hit other stocks like AMC, Nokia and Bed, Bath and Beyond. Generally speaking, meme stocks are stocks that institutional investors like hedge funds have bet would decline in value.
Traders of AMC call themselves “apes” and have a sizable, passionate base on social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit. They affectionally refer to AMC’s Aron as “silverback.”
This year alone, AMC’s stock went from trading round $5 a share to a high of over $59 in June, and it now trades around $46 a share. In fact, AMC shares are up a jaw-dropping 2,100 percent year to date, thanks to the meme-stock frenzy, though they have slumped 15 percent over the past three months.
Similar to meme stocks, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have also seen wild price swings this year. In April, the price of bitcoin reached as high as nearly $65,000 per coin before tumbling down below $30,000 per coin last month.
Bitcoin was last seen trading at about $47,579 per coin, according to data from Coinbase.
Although many big companies in America are jumping on to the crypto bandwagon and accepting the currency for purchases, analysts have raised questions about the viability of day-to-day use of cryptocurrencies.
“People are not buying Bitcoin to spend them,” Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank recently told Reuters. “For me, it’s still not a nicely established currency in the sense that it’s more of an investment for the future or for something that we may want to have in the future.”
