{"id":141410,"date":"2017-12-22T09:33:46","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T14:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=141410"},"modified":"2017-12-22T09:33:46","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T14:33:46","slug":"whats-in-a-name-if-its-close-to-bitcoin-its-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/12\/22\/whats-in-a-name-if-its-close-to-bitcoin-its-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a name? If it’s close to ‘bitcoin’ it’s gold"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The name change was enough to send the shares of the company based in Hicksville, New York, soaring almost 200 per cent Thursday. (Pixabay photo)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What’s in a name? These days, if it’s anything close to \u201cbitcoin,\u201d it’s Wall Street gold.<\/p>\n

The latest example of a company trying to tie its fortunes to the cryptocurrency craze came Thursday in form of an iced tea maker.<\/p>\n

Long Island Iced Tea Corp. until this week was known for its ready-to-drink beverages in flavours such as peach, raspberry, guava, lemon and mango. But Thursday said that it was undertaking a radical rebranding.<\/p>\n

The company announced it will now be known as Long Blockchain Corp., shifting its primary focus from iced tea to \u201cthe exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain\u00a0technology.\u201d Blockchain is a ledger where transactions of digital currencies, like bitcoin, are recorded.<\/p>\n

The name change was enough to send the shares of the company based in Hicksville, New York, soaring almost 200 per cent Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is craziness going on,\u201d said Emin Gun Sirer, an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University. \u201cThere always is when there is exciting new\u00a0technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long Island Iced Tea, or Long Blockchain, is not the first company to get a bitcoin-related boost and likely will not be the last, experts say.<\/p>\n

Bioptix Inc., a biotech company based in Colorado, announced in October it was changing its name to Riot Blockchain Inc. to reflect its new focus. Its stock is up about 250 per cent, even after a 24 per cent drop Thursday. Overstock.com’s shares have risen 285 per cent this year as the online retailer has announced it would accept bitcoin for purchases and make a coin offering through its exchange. And British company On-line PLC’s stock soared nearly 400 per cent in October when it announced plans to change its name to On-line Blockchain PLC.<\/p>\n

Nova Lifestyle Inc., a modern furniture company, also got in on the action Thursday, saying that it would be start accepting bitcoin and other major cryptocurrency and announcing the creation of a subsidiary called \u201cI Design Blockchain\u00a0Technology\u00a0Inc.\u201d Its stock rose 18 per cent.<\/p>\n

Given the recent skyhigh surge in bitcoin it traded around $15,500 Thursday after starting the year at about $1,000 and other cryptocurrencies, this halo effect isn’t entirely surprising.<\/p>\n

It is also reminiscent of the dot-com craze of the late ’90s when seemingly sleepy stocks would rocket when they appended a \u201cdot-com\u201d to their names, said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank.<\/p>\n

Any time there is a major disruption in an industry or hot new\u00a0technology, other companies will want in, said branding expert Allen Adamson. But he said that without a business or\u00a0technology\u00a0plan, it’s a fraud.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a jump-on-the-bandwagon-and-make-a-quick-buck time,\u201d Adamson said. \u201cIt’s not a serious business play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long Blockchain did not return a call for comment.<\/p>\n

The company, which went public in 2016, has not earned a profit for at least five years. Its news release did not offer definitive plans for the\u00a0technology, saying only that it sees a \u201conce-in-a generation opportunity\u201d and that it is in the \u201cpreliminary stages of evaluating specific opportunities.\u201d It will continue to run its beverage business.<\/p>\n

Long Blockchain said it plans to ask the Nasdaq to change its trading symbol from its current \u201cLTEA,\u201d but didn’t disclose what it wants the symbol changed to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s in a name? These days, if it’s anything close to \u201cbitcoin,\u201d it’s Wall Street gold. The latest example of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":141419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[40110,40109],"class_list":["post-141410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-long-island-iced-tea-corp","tag-whats-in-a-name-if-its-close-to-bitcoin-its-gold","mauthors-sarah-skidmore-sell","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}