MoviePass just hit the 1.5 million subscriber mark and is now eyeing an IPO—or an ICO.
Initial coin offerings, in which an internet company sells tokens for later use in its own ecosystem, have exploded in popularity; companies have raised nearly $4 billion in ICOs so far, according to CoinDesk.
“We look at all that stuff,” says Ted Farnsworth, CEO of Helios and Matheson, which is the majority owner of MoviePass. “We’ve been in discussions with all those type of things, with all our attorneys. The main thing is really, how do you do it within all the regulations of the SEC, and also on the blockchain side as well, make sure it’s not just the flavor of the day. But we’ve looked at that technology for well over a year now.”
MoviePass has been a hit with moviegoers happy to pay less than $10 per month for unlimited movies. Short sellers have also taken a liking to the stock, questioning its road to profitability given that it pays full-price for its members’ tickets. Helios and Matheson (HMNY) short interest on the Nasdaq is up from 522,265 in August to 3,726,178 in December.
For MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe, a crypto push has legitimate appeal because, “The exciting thing is that anytime you make a service available that you can use crypto currency, actually use it in your day-to-day business, helps support that altogether with people.”
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Jen Rogers is the anchor of The Final Round, Yahoo Finance’s daily 3:55pm live show. Follow @jensaidit on Twitter or @jenrogershere on Instagram.
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