AMC has announced that it plans to accept Bitcoin as payment for movie tickets and concessions at its theaters. Yes, really. The meme stock of a company found a way to attract some new retail holders perhaps — or maybe they’re really interested in Bitcoin?
It’s not the most shocking move. Bitcoin has seemingly been the hype-attractor of many companies in a similar position to AMC. Tesla, of course, is the prototype, announcing that it would accept bitcoin as payment for its cars and that it was buying bitcoin for its balance sheet — and then later walking back that first part. Yeah, Tesla isn’t accepting bitcoin anymore.
But here’s AMC to join the Bitcoin club:
The cynical take is that AMC is a severely struggling company and anything to give its stock the semblance of value is a win — and Bitcoin adoption has certainly boosted some stocks this year, for better or worse.
On the other hand, there’s the very real possibility that AMC is interested in holding a modern, decentralized money with a hard-capped supply, and taking that digital real estate from its customers for a movie or two is an easy way to accumulate it. But I’d guess AMC will run into the same problem pretty much every company that has started accepting bitcoin has: bitcoin holders aren’t exactly interested in parting with their coins.