AMC Theatres will start accepting Bitcoin to pay for movie tickets, its CEO announced during AMC’s earnings call on Monday. AMC is the biggest chain of movie theatres in the US, and joins a growing number of businesses that are now starting to accept Bitcoin as a form of payments. Although Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrency have been seen as a strong investment for some years now, it has been harder to use them as currency, but with their values hitting new highs in 2021, institutional investors are getting on board, and more businesses want in as well.
During the AMC earnings call on Monday, CEO Adam Aron said that AMC will start accepting Bitcoin as payments for tickets purchased online by the end of 2021, and since these are online purchases, would be applicable to its theatres across the United States. Many brands have been running smaller tests accepting cryptocurrency in localised markets but AMC will bring it to all of its theatres.
On the call, Aron said that the movie theatre chain will set up the IT systems in place to accept Bitcoin from the end of 2021. This follows in the footsteps of Quiznos, which recently announced that it will accept Bitcoin for sandwiches in test markets, and Burger King Brazil recently said that it will accept payments in the Shiba Inu inspired meme currency, Dogecoin, but only for the dog treats that it sells.
Earlier, Tesla had started accepting Bitcoin payments, but halted the process in mid-May. Between January and April, the price of Bitcoin surged strongly, bringing the cryptocurrency to an all time high. Since then, it has been seeing steady declines but if the last few days are any indication, it is possible that Bitcoin has turned a corner.