The SHIB-themed diner serves hot wings, burgers and cocktails, but despite the branding, still trades mostly in fiat.
Paypal Loses AMC Theaters Throne, Bitpay Will Support Shiba Inu Payments
AMC Theather, the largest movie theater company in the world, announced that they will be accepting Shiba Inu (SHIB) as a payment method through Bitpay, becoming their first client to do so.
The company has been working on accepting diverse cryptocurrencies as payment methods for a while and now offers to do so through PayPal, which allows payments in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Lietcoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
However, AMC is also interested in accepting the meme cryptocurrencies Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) because of the remarkable popularity both showed on Twitter during polls made by the theater chain CEO Adam Aron.
When CEO Adam Aron conducted the last Twitter poll, Shiba Inu got 124,623 votes in favor, which takes us to this new announcement in which Shiba Inu shares its spotlight with Bitpay. In about 3 months PayPal will cease to be the only payment method that supports cryptocurrencies on the AMC website.
Related Reading | AMC Theaters Considers Accepting Shiba Inu As Payment Amid Growing Interest
Bitpay, as a payment method for the theater chain, does not only allow more cryptos as options -a great marketing strategy for AMC-, but it also emphasizes Paypal limitations with only four crypto coins and services that lack many great features offered by actual crypto wallets.
SHIB price at $0.00004960 in the daily chart | Source: SHIBUSD on TradingView.com
PayPal Gives Fake Numbers As Crypto, Users Say
At the beginning of the year, Paypal launched a new service enabling its customers to “buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal account”. Ever since, they reported a 22% yearly increase of active accounts in Q3, now having 361 million users.
For Paypal, this seems to have worked as a rewarding marketing strategy, since the main intention was to attract clients that might stay for other features.
However, Paypal does not provide its users with a crypto wallet and there are no private keys. The crypto bought in PayPal can mostly be useful inside its retail network.
Essentially, what the platform does is hold the user’s cryptocurrencies on its behalf, but does not provide them with a real one. Using Paypal also implies no anonymity and limited options to use the funds, which, for many, defeats the purpose of crypto.
Back to when the company made the announcement, many Reddit users described the feature as something that gives “fake numbers as crypto”, stating that this is not an intent of adoption of crypto, but the monopolization of it, and if the mainstream adoption of crypto were to follow this path, it would not be different as “the banks holding all the money”.
One user suggested that PayPal “will simply let people think they are using Bitcoin when they’re really not, and then use the blockchain as a settlement layer. And then we’re right back in a central bank dystopia.”
PayPal expanded this feature towards Venmo. A spokesperson shared with Bloomberg that offering crypto is “part of Venmo’s continued evolution from a peer-to-peer payments app to a more holistic offering that our customers rely on in their everyday financial lives.”
Related Reading | PayPal Co-founder Peter Thiel Admits He Underinvested In Bitcoin
PayPal Vs. Bitpay
PayPal’s crypto announcements did have some highlights, as its already wide platforms could increase the public’s acceptance of major coins. Some even thought that it could also increase their value, and saw the possibility for the company to allow withdrawals of coins eventually.
However, BitPay crypto-related features are not only better, but truer to crypto ideals. Users claim Bitcoin transfers from other wallets to BitPay are easy, it allows payments from anywhere, Bitcoin can be directly transferred into a debit card or exchanged for other currencies. Creating a Bitcoin wallet in the platform allows the user to spend the coin anywhere by offering to turn it into dollars.
Non-custodial wallets, such as BitPay’s, are described as decentralized because the customer gets to own its private keys and has total control over their funds, opposingly to PayPal’s service.
The rating for user satisfaction between the two platforms reads BitPay (100%) vs. PayPal (97%) according to FinancesOnline. Now being under the eye of AMC’s huge customer base and SHIB’s enthusiasts, will BitPay be overshadowing PayPal as a payment method?
AMC Theatres Says Customers Will Soon Be Able To Pay With Shiba Inu
Shiba Inu has begun to progress to the next stage of its evolution, being the payments space. The meme coin is taking the same route as its predecessor to being a payment token for facilitating small transactions. It has now made it into AMC Theatre’s list of cryptocurrencies that will be accepted for purchases in the coming months.
This will provide what will be a utility for the meme coin going forward. Shiba Inu which was created with no utility prospects, moved only by the power of internet hype, will see a real-world application soon.
Related Reading | AMC Theaters Considers Accepting Shiba Inu As Payment Amid Growing Interest
AMC Announces Shiba Inu Payments
AMC CEO Adam Aron had published a poll on Twitter on October 29th to poll the community on their thoughts on Shiba Inu. The poll was similar to the poll carried out for SHIB rival Dogecoin before the company had implemented Dogecoin payments for tickets and concessions. The poll garnered over 150,000 votes, with 81.4% of the voters voting in favor of accepting SHIB.
TWITTER POLL #2: As you know, you can now purchase AMC gift cards using cryptocurrency, and our IT group is writing code so that soon we can accept online payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Dogecoin among others. Should we strive to take Shiba Inu too?
— Adam Aron (@CEOAdam) October 29, 2021
SHIB price maintains low momentum | Source: SHIBUSD on TradingView.com
Fast forward to November and AMC held its quarterly earnings call on Monday. The earnings had more than 10,000 people listening, where CEO Adam Aron announced that the theatre chain would be accepting Shiba Inu as a payment method in the future. Theatre-goers would be able to purchase tickets and concessions as they would be able to with other cryptocurrencies.
The company, however, did not reveal a time frame for when SHIB payments would be accepted on its platform, but it is expected that the meme coin will go into effect alongside cryptocurrencies scheduled to be implemented for payments in 2022.
AMC Growing Its Lineup
The addition of Shiba Inu as an expected payment method has brought the total to six cryptocurrencies set to be accepted at the theatre chain. CEO Adam Aron had previously disclosed that the entertainment giant was working to implement crypto payments for its services. Initially, bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency announced. But as time went on, other cryptocurrencies were added to the lineup.
Related Reading | Shiba Inu Beats Out Cardano, Dogecoin On Top 10 Watch-Listed Tokens
Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin were further added to the list to help provide more options for users when paying with cryptocurrencies. Then in October, Aron announced that the theatre chain would begin accepting Dogecoin, bringing the total to five.
Dogecoin payments were implemented after the CEO carried out a poll that saw the overwhelming majority voted for Doge to be added to the lineup. On October 5th, Dogecoin payments were officially announced, allowing users to purchase gift cards of up to $200 a day using the cryptocurrency.
Featured image from CNBC, chart from TradingView.com
