Movie theatre chain AMC Entertainment Holding Inc. (AMC), has announced its plans to accept bitcoins as a mode of payment from the end of the year.
Almost a year back, the world’s largest theatre company, AMC was on the verge of bankruptcy and from there, it’s meteoric rise back in business has been miraculous.
The rise, chiefly driven by Reddit users, has brought the business back into the thick of things. Together with GameStop (GME), the company was known as “meme stock”. Primarily, young traders bought the shares to keep AMC alive because of the nostalgia attached to it. Soon, this movement took off and AMC is currently riding high on a $917 million cash influx. The decision to accept bitcoins is thought to please the young investors.
AMC CEO Adam Aron, during the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call, said, “We are also in the preliminary stage of now exploring how else AMC can participate in this new burgeoning cryptocurrency universe and we’re quite intrigued by potentially lucrative business opportunities for AMC if we intelligently pursue further serious involvement with cryptocurrency.”
On learning about cryptocurrencies and the integration of it in the theatre business, Aron added, “I’ve had to learn more in the past six months about blockchain and cryptocurrency than I learned about it in the entire decade before that. This increased knowledge has given me the confidence to tell you all today that AMC is hereby formally announcing on this call that by year’s end we will have the information technology systems in place to accept bitcoin.”
Paying with Bitcoin will only be limited to online bookings. However, the platform or technology that AMC will be using was not revealed. The company will also accept the more conventional online payment apps, Google Pay and Apple Pay.
Till last year, car maker Tesla, Inc (TSLA) was famous for being one of the pioneers of the process. Elon Musk’s hot and cold relationship with cryptocurrencies has been the subject of a lot of rumors. However, earlier this year, Starbucks joined the list where users could use cryptocurrencies to top up its gift card.
AMC also announced that it is not really excited about drive-ins as a future of movies going in the post pandemic world.
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