This morning, Long Island Iced Tea, a New York-based beverage maker, announced it was changing its name to Long Blockchain Corp. The company’s relation to cryptocurrency is dubious — it says it will “leverage the benefits of blockchain technology” — but it was quickly rewarded with a 200 percent jump in stock price at the opening of trading.
Long Island Iced Tea isn’t the first or even the strangest company to try cashing in on the bitcoin craze. As bitcoin’s value skyrocketed past $15,000 earlier this month, several companies have rewritten their name or mission statement to reference blockchain technology or cryptocurrency. Just a mention of bitcoin appears enough to woo investors and get media attention (including, now, this story).
Bloomberg noted several of the stranger rebranding efforts: sports bras, juice, and e-cigarette companies that appear to have had very little to do with bitcoin previously.
Formerly known as SkyPeople Fruit Juice, the Hong Kong-based company renamed itself Future FinTech Group Inc. Despite the new label, the company still makes packaged food and, in its November presentation to investors, made mention of its plans to expand kiwi and orange plantations.
Another company, The Crypto Company, actually deals in cryptocurrency but went public by acquiring a sports bra company. The Crypto Company had its stock suspended by the SEC on Tuesday, citing concerns about accuracy and “potentially manipulative transactions.” The public sports bra company it acquired had declared quite ambitiously on its site that its bras were going to have pockets for holding money, chapstick, and ID, a tiny phone charger, and mace.
Then in the vaping business, the California-based Vapetek Inc. has decided to rename itself Nodechain Inc. and says it will explore Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. Nodechain says it has many GPU mining rigs it bought from US suppliers and estimates that it will be able to pull in around $500 in ethereum or in bitcoin per rig each day. The publicly traded company also changed its website domain from Vapetek.com to Nodecha.in.
In one of the more extreme cases, a Hong Kong group called Ping Shan Tea Group Limited, which, as its name suggested, makes tea, has redefined itself as Blockchain Group Co Ltd. Its website now incongruously shows a sleek blockchain logo alongside large stretches of a tea plantation.
Like Ping Shan, now Blockchain Group, Long Blockchain Corp. is going to continue making tea despite its new name. It’s all reminiscent of yesteryear’s dot com bubble when random companies would add dot com to their names.
Left Image: Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images. Right Image: iStock / Getty Images Plus
As anyone who's been on the internet this year knows, the price of Bitcoin has exploded. The idea of making millions for doing next to nothing makes Americans lose their minds, so it's not surprising that people who had never heard of cryptocurrency a few years (or even months or weeks) ago are now more than willing to invest in it. At least some experts say the fact that consumers are reportedly taking out credit card debt and mortgages to do so suggests a speculative bubble is looming. After all, if you ask any given Bitcoin proponent how blockchain technology works, there's a good chance you'll be met with silence or rage.
But the combination of hype and a general lack of knowledge about what's being invested in seems to have some investors latching onto anything with the words 'Bitcoin' or 'blockchain' in it. Or at least that's the only plausible explanation for why a beverage company saw its shares rise by almost 300 percent after a name change from Long Island Iced Tea Corp. to Long Blockchain Corp.
According to Bloomberg, it's just one of several companies that have rebranded to capitalize on the crypto craze. Not that such a pivot necessarily means a whole lot in particular for Long Blockchain, which appears to remain a company that literally sells lemonade—albeit one that was struggling before it got in on the gold rush.
"As with many of the recently christened crypto companies—a list that includes former makers of juice, sports bras and sofas—Long Blockchain so far has little to show for its aspirations," Bloomberg reported. "It has no agreements with any blockchain firms, and says 'there is no assurance that a definitive agreement with these, or any other entity, will be entered into or ultimately consummated.'"
The main thing this company has done differently at this stage, so far as the outside world can tell, is purchase longblockchain.com. Its original website remains intact and promotes their signature product of Long Island Tea.
Speaking of misleading names, this stuff is apparently non-alcoholic.
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The Ultimate Guide To Understanding The Basics of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
Original cartoon can be found at http://ericsammons.com/what-is-the-blockchain/
How I often feel when I hear someone talking about cryptocurrencies.
If you watched the hilarious satirical guy explaining bitcoin and understood almost none of it — fear not — today we are going to decode his message!
Where do we even start? I know! Let’s start by the most obvious — blockchain! What the hell is a “blockchain”?
Blockchain is basically just a decentralized database — a ledger if you will.
What is the difference between centralized and decentralized? Let’s imagine you have two apples and you want to give one apple to your friend, William.
Well, in a centralized world you would have to ask permission from Williams friend, Bill. First Bill will have to vet if you have the apple or not and if you do — Bill gives you permission to hand over the apple. Bill in this example is the bank.
But with a decentralized — you actually don’t have to ask permission from Bill, aka the bank. Blockchain will confirm if you have the apple and will proceed with the hand out.
Blockchain is a decentralised digital ledger that records transactions in real time, and stores them in an online network, but how does it work?
EVERY now and then there’s an idea or a new kind of technology that captivates investors and the mere mention of it sparks frenzied speculation.
At the moment, that thing is blockchain technology.
If you’re a company, just say you’re jumping on the blockchain bandwagon and people will start throwing money at you apparently.
The latest example: Long Island Iced Tea Corp. which, rather bizarrely, changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp. overnight.
Surprisingly, this is not a joke. The unprofitable company has made a sudden change in direction.
And how did the world respond? The company’s shares soared as much as 500 per cent in pre-market trading before settling back to a still monster gain of 275 per cent.
Long Island Iced Tea Corp to rebrand as "Long Blockchain Corp", stock up 280% in 6 minutes since issuing press release to change name. Unreal. $LTEA — Dennis Dick (@TripleDTrader) December 21, 2017
You literally can't make this up. Long Island Iced Tea Corp. (Symbol: LTEA) just changed their name to Long Blockchain Corp. The stock is up over +250% permarket, lol! — Joseph Fahmy (@jfahmy) December 21, 2017
Blockchain — which underpins bitcoin — acts as a decentralised and distributed digital ledger used to record transactions across many computers and is completely secured using sophisticated cryptography. It is viewed by many as a revolutionary technology that is tipped to change a number on industries.
But this is getting ridiculous.
“It’s the latest in a near-daily phenomenon sweeping the stock market, where obscure microcap companies reorient to focus on some aspect of the mania sparked by bitcoin’s almost 1500 per cent rally this year,” wrote Bloomberg.
Until Thursday, Long Island Iced Tea Corp. focused on making non-alcoholic iced teas and lemonades, something it still plans to do. But now it wants to explore opportunities in the hottest thing going around.
As proof of its intent, the company said it plans to ask the Nasdaq exchange to change its ticker and has reserved the domain www.longblockchain.com.
“I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished in the beverage industry and we are committed to growing our business both on a national and international scale,” the company’s chief executive Philip Thomas said in a statement overnight.
The details about what the company actually plans to do are scarce. According to its website, the drinks maker is in the “preliminary stages of evaluating specific opportunities” in the blockchain space. As some have pointed out, much of the trading would’ve been driven buy bots which scan social media and market information for certain keywords and buy up stocks.
For many, the current frenzy is reminiscent of the dotcom bubble in which investors clamoured to buy anything which presented itself as an internet stock.
“It’s so reminiscent of what happened in the late 1990s,” financial author Scott Nations told Bloomberg.
These “sorts of companies that go up the course of five or 10 times in one day just because they say that they’re a blockchain company now,” he said. “To me, that just confirms that we’re in a bubble.”
I hope none of my followers bought the stock for the iced tea company that added blockchain to its name. — Laura Shin (@laurashin) December 21, 2017
$LTEA a company renames from Long Island Iced Tea Corp to Long Island Blockchain corp, and the stock goes boom, 400% up. Proves the stock market isn't rational whatsoever. It's all about being lucky — Prashanth (@worstcomplexity) December 21, 2017
