AMC Announces It Will Allow People to Buy Movie Tickets With Bitcoin

Bitcoin adoption continues to progress, and at an even greater pace than most people expected. More and more businesses, traders, institutions, and others are starting to accept BTC and other cryptocurrencies almost every day. While the prices are growing once again — Bitcoin price is currently back at $45,000 per coin — the adoption has been progressing well even during the last two months, which have been highly bearish.

Right now, Bitcoin is once again making headlines as AMC Entertainment (AMC ) announced yesterday that it will start accepting Bitcoin as payment for movie tickets and concessions. Bitcoin payments will, for now, at least, only be available for online purchases, although they will be accepted for all of AMC’s US theaters.

The move is further combining the crypto industry with entertainment — and entertainment has been one of the earliest industries willing to accept cryptocurrencies. Now, with AMC’s support, this relationship is becoming even more official.

AMC’s CEO, Adam Aron, recently said during an earnings call that the movie theater chain will set in place complex IT systems that will allow them to start accepting crypto payments. According to him, AMC’s theaters will be ready to start accepting BTC by the end of 2021.

Bitcoin and AMC both saw major price swings

Another reason why this is a noteworthy development is the fact that Bitcoin is not the only highly speculative asset in this arrangement. As many may remember, AMC also became a meme stock star that attracted countless retail traders early in 2021, when Reddit’s WallStreetBets group started a series of short squeezes. The group originally stood up against institutional investors that were shorting GameStop’s (GME ) stocks and were well on their way to destroying the company for profit.

Reddit’s retail traders banded together to stop this, which they did, quite successfully. However, they did not stop with GameStop, but they also continued protecting stocks of other companies that institutions are trying to short in exchange for earnings. AMC was one of them.

As for Bitcoin itself, its volatility is nothing new, and its massive price swings have been a major topic of conversation for years. Most recently, Bitcoin hit an ATH at $64,800 some three months ago, only to see a major price drop in mid-May. The coin’s price was cut in half, and it ended up between $30k and $35k, fluctuating between these two levels for two months.

Over the last two or three weeks, however, Bitcoin’s price started a recovery that took it to mid-$40,000s, where it sits right now. The rebound has proven that, while the price did correct by over 50%, this is still only a dip, and not the start of a new crypto winter. The rebound has also brought quite a bit of optimism back to the crypto industry.

Notable BTC developments in 2021

The biggest move that Bitcoin has seen this year was the adoption by Tesla (TSLA ), which announced in early 2021 that it will start accepting BTC payments. However, in May, the company halted BTC payments, claiming that Bitcoin is too environmentally unfriendly for it to continue using it. This has had a heavy impact on the coin’s price, but it also shifted the attention towards the eco-friendliness of crypto.

Around the same time, China started cracking down on Bitcoin miners, banishing them from multiple provinces, and becoming more crypto-unfriendly than ever.

As for AMC, its own shares reacted extremely positively to the announcement, surging by 4% in extended trading. The move is showing that the awareness of Bitcoin, as well as the demand for crypto use cases are on the rise, and any company willing to accept Bitcoin payments right now is gaining great popularity.