Blockchains. Yes, those. You don’t know what they are. I don’t know what they are. They seem to be valuable, because Long Island Iced Tea Corporation renamed itself as Long Blockchain Corporation and tripled its stock value on Thursday (the price has come back down a bit on Friday).
Long Blockchain is only the latest company to see its value skyrocket after adding “blockchain” to its moniker, according to Ars Technica. The publication notes this is similar to how companies in the late 1990s increased their stock prices simply by adding “.com” to their names. Nothing bad happened as a result of that strategy, right?
“The parent company is shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology,” according to a press release announcing the rebrand. “Blockchain acts as a public, decentralized ledger. This ledger provides a single, unified source of data, creating a clearer audit trail and consistency across parties. The Company believes that emerging blockchain technologies are creating a fundamental paradigm shift across the global marketplace, with far reaching applications across all industries from financial services (smart settlements) to consumer packaged goods (supply chain verification) to healthcare (electronic medical records).”
Okay. Sounds good, I guess.
Long Blockchain plans to stay in the iced tea business by operating Long Island Brand Beverages, LLC as a wholly owned subsidiary. Since the company’s stock had dropped from $90 per share since debuting in 2009 down to $2.45 ahead of this announcement, maybe Long Blockchain should just focus on blockchains, whatever they are.
