Bitcoin MANIA: Long Island Iced Tea Corp. Becomes Long Blockchain Corp., Causing Stock To Surge

It’s impossible to ignore the cultural rollercoaster of cryptocurrency right now. When Bitcoin Cash hit Coinbase the other night causing Coinbase to suspend trading under insane volume, it skyrocketed to the top trending topic on Twitter and other social media platforms. Today the news gets wackier: A company called “The Long Island Iced Tea Company” decided to file a name-change to become “Long Blockchain Company”, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings. This means the company is going from a business built around non-alcoholic ice tea (products pictured above) to being a… blockchain technology company. This has to be the biggest business pivots in the history of business pivots:

Via Bloomberg:

“We view advances in blockchain technology as a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and have made the decision to pivot our business strategy in order to pursue opportunities in this evolving industry,” said Long Island Iced Tea Corp. CEO Philip Thomas in a statement.

Meanwhile, publicly-traded stock in the company is soaring. Stock hit $9.49 at one point before closing at $6.91, with 15 million shares changed hands today after the announcement was made.

Someone made a lot of money on this rebranding move, which echoes two similar pennystock moves, according to CNN. A small tobacco company called Rich Cigars and an e-cigarette company Vapetek enjoyed a similar stock spike after saying they were now blockchain companies recently, according to CNN.

Meanwhile, many people are signaling this is Bitcoin’s Pets.com moment. For starters, the company doesn’t even have any plans for implementing blockchain technology.

A few important notes from Bloomberg:

“It’s so reminiscent of what happened in the late 1990s,” Scott Nations, author of ‘A History of the United States in Five Crashes,’ said by phone. “A company that had nothing to do with the internet would put out a press release that they were going to become an internet company now, and the same sort of thing would happen.”

Long Blockchain’s shares may be benefiting from the announcement, but so far the company has little to show for its aspirations. 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.” A request for comment from Chief Executive Officer Philip Thomas wasn’t immediately returned.

And it’s numbers as a company are far from anything worth bragging about:

Long Island Iced Tea had a net loss of $3.9 million on sales of $1.6 million in the three months ended Sept. 30. The company has lost $11.6 million on sales of $3.9 million in the first nine months of the year.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs — one of the biggest financial institutions in the world — just announced it’s setting up a crypto trading desk.

Let the bubble speculation begin now.

Brandon Wenerd is BroBible's publisher, writing on this site since 2009. He writes about sports, music, men's fashion, outdoor gear, traveling, skiing, and epic adventures. Based in Los Angeles, he also enjoys interviewing athletes and entertainers. Proud Penn State alum, former New Yorker. Email: brandon@brobible.com