Since 2011, Long Island Iced Tea Corp., a little-known company based in Hicksville, New York, was best known for hawking ready-made iced teas and similar refreshing beverages. But that all changed on Tuesday morning, when the company announced in a press release that it would rebrand as a blockchain-technology company. Long Island Iced Tea Corp. would be no more, the company said. Instead, it would be “shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology.” As such, its name would change from Long Island Iced Tea Corp. to the much more crypto-friendly Long Blockchain Corp.; it even had the foresight to reserve the Web site domain www.longblockchain.com. Yes, the iced-tea company had formally pivoted to blockchain.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
The effect on the company’s stock price was almost instantaneous. Shares spiked as much as 500 percent in premarket trading, eventually settling at a 275-percent gain, never mind that the company plans to maintain its focus on ready-made, grab-and-go drinks, and thus far has little to show for its supposed aspirations to expand into blockchain technology.
Regardless of its intentions, the company is not alone in cashing in on the euphoric wave surrounding bitcoin mania. Incredibly, another small beverage company, SkyPeople Fruit Juice, renamed itself Future FinTech over the summer, and this week saw its stock pop 200 percent. And a fintech company called Longfin, which started trading on the NASDAQ last week at a modest $5 per share, saw its value spike to $7 billion last week after it announced it had bought Ziddu.com, “a blockchain-empowered global micro-lending solutions provider” that only transacts in cryptocurrency.
The S.E.C. has recently moved to tamp down on small stock companies that have changed their names to try to ride the crypto wave; trading shares of the Crypto Company was suspended earlier this month after it announced plans to introduce a crypto trading floor, causing its stock to spike as much as 17,000 percent; it remains to be seen whether the agency will take similar action against the company formerly known as Long Island Iced Tea Corp. Though cryptocurrencies initially took off among hobbyists and niche enthusiasts, they have since migrated to mainstream markets, creating a bubble that, should it burst unexpectedly, could hold dire implications for the real economy.
