The Atlantic

It Is Silly Season in the Land of Cryptocurrency

The excitement about bitcoin and blockchain is sort of like the dot-com bubble—if nobody in 2000 was quite sure what the internet was for.
Source: Dado Ruvic / Reuters

In October, the Colorado biotech company Bioptix changed its name to Riot Blockchain. The company’s valuation doubled within a few days.

This might strike you as an extraordinarily bizarre story. But even more bizarrely, it’s becoming ordinary. Weeks later, the British company Online PLC changed its name to Online Blockchain. The company’s shares 400 percent. In December, the Long Island Iced Tea Corporation—which, as you might expect, sold iced tea—rebranded itself Long Blockchain. The company’s shares promptly nearly 300 percent. On Tuesday this week, the legacy photography company Kodak the launch of KODAKCoin, a “photo-centric cryptocurrency to empower photographers and agencies to take greater control in image rights management.” The stock rose

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