Overstock, the retail giant is planning to set take a dive in the ocean of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Patrick Byrne, the founder, and CEO of Overstock announced yesterday in a report in the Wall Street Journal that that Overstock is going to sell off its retail business by February next year. According to Patrick, the company is going to focus on an all blockchain and cryptocurrency model for the future after selling off the retail business to undisclosed buyers. After the following news, the price of Overstock shares surged up to 26% tackling its yearly downfall of 66%.
Overstock
Overstock was founded by Patrick Byrne in 1999 with a major focus of selling goods such as jewelry and furniture online. Overstock has many subsidiaries that are based on the blockchain technology as the CEO Byrne is quite passionate about the new technology and believes it to be the future of online businesses. Overstock is currently running in losses of over $163 million this year. The company had invested $175 million in Medici Ventures- a blockchain startup that is fully owned by Overstock. Another startup tZero which is a trading system hasn’t been launched yet but has a monthly expense of over $2 million. Byrne sees a great future of its brand through Medici Ventures.
Byrne told the Wall Street Journal that he doesn’t care about losing these $2 million every month as he thinks that they’ve got a cold fusion on the blockchain side.
Overstock Shares and Bitcoin Price Correlated
Thought the company denies the fact that they have any significant holdings in bitcoin, the price of overstock shares and bitcoin have been riding on the same boat. When bitcoin rose up to $20000 last year end, the price of overstock shares also surged more than 400%. After bitcoin price started to fall, Overstock shares also started to fall from a high of $80 in January this year to a whopping low of $21 as of today. The same story goes with bitcoin which dived from a height of $20000 to a whopping low of $4300 today.
While bitcoin is being criticized by famous wall street executives such as Warren Buffet, the technology behind cryptocurrencies is widely being adopted by giants such as Amazon, Facebook, J.P Morgan, IBM etc.
