
Long Island Iced Tea Soars 500% After Changing Its Name to Long Blockchain - dkyc
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/crypto-craze-sees-long-island-iced-tea-rename-as-long-blockchain
======
spraak
When I first read the title I thought, "How did an Onion article make it to
the front page of HN?"

~~~
mannykannot
There is a serious point here - as someone more familiar with the alcoholic
beverage of the company's original name than its wholesome products, I think
we need some blockchain-themed cocktails for the holidays (it's probably been
done... does anyone have recipes?)

~~~
acdanger
Something with a lot of fizz that leaves you with a bitter aftertaste and a
bad hangover?

Looks like there's already a bitcoin cocktail floating about:
[http://www.barmeister.com/drinks/recipe/7511/?o=by_date](http://www.barmeister.com/drinks/recipe/7511/?o=by_date)

~~~
ceejayoz
Coke and Mentos, resulting in a briefly frothy mixture followed by a mostly
empty glass.

~~~
mizzao
That only works with diet coke.

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
It works with any carbonated drink, diet coke just happens to be the frothiest
of the ones tested.

------
victor106
A tulip of our times...

History never repeats but it rhymes

For people who missed out on the .com bubble don’t miss this out. It’s a good
time to experience what a bubble looks like so you can detect one in the
future...

Remember this buffet quote It’s better to be fearful when others are greedy
and greedy when others are fearful

~~~
moduspol
Respectfully, what drives people to post tulip and dot-com bubble comparisons
on literally every cryptocurrency / blockchain post? We saw it yesterday. We
saw it last week. And a few months ago. And in 2016, and 2014, and 2012.

It's unfalsifiable and meaningless. We don't need to have this same "point"
made on every post.

~~~
sgt101
If just one person is contemplating betting their mortgage on bitcoin and they
are made to think differently because of a bubble post then it's worth it to
me!

~~~
charlesdm
Not that I think you're wrong, but every person who did that in 2014, 2015 or
2016 probably begs to differ.

In fact, if they sell today, they'd probably be set for life.

~~~
overcast
Guaranteed anyone foolish enough to bet their mortgage at those times, bought
high and sold low in fear of losing it all. They are not the rational type.

~~~
charlesdm
Maybe. I don't necessarily think taking a huge risk with substantial upside is
always an idiotic thing to do.

Yes it might be a gamble and speculation, but get it right in a bubble and
you're (sort of) set for life. You can make a good calculated bet and see it
pay off. Any engineer on $100k to 200k a year can probably afford to put $200k
in crypto and recover if it evaporates.

If you compare to certain high risk shares trading on the stock market (i.e.
some tech and biotech shares), even though crypto might have a 10x upside, I
don't think investing in crypto is 10 times as risky. If you're aggressive,
you're probably better off investing in crypto today than in the market.

~~~
overcast
Ok, so for majority of the rest of the population, without access to six
figure incomes. Bitcoin is completely irrational. There is a guy in my shop
right now, a shop full of guys making maybe $15 an hr at the high end, handing
out his "bitcoin consultant" business card. These are the people making
irrational bets on this, while those invested years ago are profiting on their
foolish dreams. People with no money to be wasting, are wasting their money.

~~~
charlesdm
Yes, of course. And since they don't put in a significant amount of money,
even if their investment were to go 50x, they probably wouldn't cash out and
keep holding. That is a clear mistake, as it can be dangerous not to exit.

I was just pointing out that it can be profitable riding a bubble, as long as
you're careful about it. I have an old money friend who put in a few million
last year. That's exciting stuff.

One thing I wonder: since they own so little, do they even move the market?

~~~
overcast
Alone no, but the combined yes. There are a few big players that manipulate
this market. The Winklevoss did it, and caused the first bubble in 2013. Then
the market fell off the cliff, and sat a $200 for the next 3 years, until
someone bought up tons at around $250-300 mark, and here we are again.

------
patio11
I think this is likely not “small companies chasing a fad” but rather “penny
stock promoters doing their usual thing: grab a listed entity for five figures
then run a boiler room, citing the most recent successful boiler room.”

~~~
acdanger
That's along the lines of what I was thinking was going on here. This is
pretty brazen.

------
mystcb
My comment from:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15978994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15978994)

\----

Looks like it [is a joke!]. I mean, the new website is only a day old, hosted
with "Hostgator", uses a free theme
([http://websites.simplesphere.net/piupiu/](http://websites.simplesphere.net/piupiu/))
and NGINX has directory listing switched on! That and all the news reports are
syndicated from the same place, so its just propagating all over the place.

That - or I am mistaken, in which case - "All Hail our new Blockchain
overlords" :)

~~~
ceejayoz
Hard to fake a NASDAQ listing:

[https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ALTEA](https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ALTEA)

Whether or not the press release is a fake, the spike is real.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Maybe I'm blind. Where does that page show their new name (other than the news
ticker on the side)?

~~~
falsedan
Why would their stock ticket show anything not related to the financials of
the stock?

~~~
tokenizerrr
This person is claiming that the NASDAQ listing proves that they've changed
their name. Yet the link itself clearly says "Long Island Iced Tea Corp", not
"Long Blockchain".

So, it would show it, because it shows the company name. And the company name
is not "Long Blockchain", so the link proves nothing and the gp is full of
shit.

~~~
roywiggins
The price spiked after the press release announcing the name change. The press
release caused a real spike.

It seems far more likely that the name change hasn't been made formal, or if
it has, it hasn't trickled into Yahoo's database yet. The press release says:

> The Company intends to request Nasdaq to change its trading symbol in
> connection with the name change.

It's an intention. It hasn't formally happened yet.

------
ecshafer
I think this might be block chain's pets.com moment. If this weren't from
Bloomberg, I would honestly think this was satire.

~~~
adventured
This is the fourth or fifth of these I've seen in the last year. Riot
Blockchain for example, which used to be a worthless, failing, tiny biotech
company. Overstock.com pulled a version of this fraud (I'm calling it a fraud,
they may be technically legally in the clear; I believe these companies are
commiting intentional fraud however, knowingly misrepresenting critical facts
about their business to shareholders).

------
LandR
I've only known Long Island Iced Tea as Vodka, Rum, Tequilla, triple sec, gin
and coca-cola.

~~~
cafard
Yeah, go figure.

------
matwood
The only reason this made any news is because it's tied to blockchain. Penny
type stocks do this pump and dump scheme all the time with whatever is hot.
Biotech was big for awhile, then pot, and now blockchain (and I'm sure I
missed a few in there).

------
kneel
Is this the result of algorithm trading?

~~~
tpkj
Also wondering that same question. If it is, it would be interesting to learn
how the conclusion to buy was reached.

~~~
ashelmire
buylist_keywords = ['blockchain', 'snake oil', 'tulip']

------
DonHopkins
It's not a bubble -- it's carbonated!

------
cpsempek
Don't be surprised if in the next edition of A Random Walk Down Wall Street
cryptos get appended to chapter 2, The Madness of Crowds. Events like these
are embarrassingly similar to those that have occurred in past bubbles. If you
have any skin in this game (as I do) you'd do well to read the aforementioned
chapter and start planning your exit strategy.

------
greysteil
For those who think this is a spoof, check the 5 day view on Google Finance:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ:LTEA](https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ:LTEA)

~~~
C14L
Look at the 5 year chart, there have been a few large jumps in the company's
stock price in the past. Don't think that "blame the Bitcoin" works for those.

------
miralabs
definitely not a bubble

~~~
Kiro
We don't even see this kind of stuff in a regular bubble. I think this is
something new, either Bubble 2.0 or The New Dawn.

I lived through the IT bubble and it mostly went unnoticed among me, my
friends and family. Literally everyone talks about Bitcoin though. I'm
seriously thinking this is a first for humanity and the consequences will be
extreme regardless of crash or paradigm shift. It's one for the history books
for sure.

~~~
rhino369
This probably isn‘t even 1/10 as bad as internet and tech bubble. That had
common people throwing their entire 401k into tech stocks.

My dad ruined his retirement fund buying Nextel options that ended up
worthless.

Bitcoin is a dumber bubble though.

~~~
cableshaft
There are people putting their life savings into bitcoin. You'll see those
stories pop up from time to time on the bitcoin subreddit.

I've only got in it what I can afford to lose, personally, which isn't a whole
lot, but it's still some skin in the game, at least.

------
mrburton
Is this real? It's not April 1st.

------
specialp
This reminds me of during the dot com boom. An analyst said that business to
business sector is worth some huge amount of money, and B2B stocks started
booming.

So a janitorial supply company changed their name and their symbol to BTOB and
exploded in value.....

------
joejerryronnie
Bubbles can be a fantastic way to generate wealth. Amass as much cash as
possible, wait for the inevitable crash (you can't time this so just be
prepared for when it does happen), and then buy tons of assets for pennies on
the dollar. If you truly believe in the fundamental value of the frothy asset,
this approach can be a huge win. Obviously, this should not be your primary
investment strategy but it worked well for me (e.g. doubled the value of my
stock portfolio in 2009 and doubled the square footage of my bay area home in
2010).

~~~
take4
That's assuming you can correctly call the bottom, otherwise you could be
waiting for a long time just to break even.

------
oroup
Reminds me of Zapata the fish oil company launching zap.com an internet portal
and then spinning out and IPOing the subsidiary. [0]

[0] [https://mobile.nytimes.com/1999/04/14/business/company-
news-...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/1999/04/14/business/company-news-zapata-
plans-to-spin-off-its-zapcom-internet-business.html)

------
beefield
Efficient markets, price contains all available information, rational
expectations and whatnot there were. Oh, yeah, almost forgot,

 _I don 't even know what a bubble means. These words have become popular. I
don't think they have any meaning._ \- Eugene Fama, Nobel Memorial Prize
laureate in Economics

------
mancerayder
So for those who remind us that the cryptocoin world is full of tulip-like
behavior with no underlying asset value... while stocks provide dividends and
represent growth and so forth: this article is a gentle reminder that stocks
are also subject to tulipy speculations.

~~~
cglace
Because people thought the stock was a tulip.

~~~
mancerayder
Sure, but as the prevalence of day trading and even automated trading that
buys and sells in short periods of time (which you can tell if you look at the
price movements of a stock in a small, say daily interval and notice
repetitive price pattern movements), a lot if not MOST stock trading is
entirely NOT based on the expectation of underlying value of the stock. Not
everyone has a Warren Buffet or Bogle-like approach to long-term investing of
stocks.

------
jrs235
WTF. Clickbait title. Even bloomberg knows it's not accurate. From the story
itself: "Long Island Iced Tea Corp. shares rose 238 percent after the company
rebranded itself Long Blockchain Corp."

238 != 500

Anyways, I think it's still crazy what blockchain mania is doing/causing.

~~~
pessimizer
Check the chart at the bottom of the article. It went up 500%, then dropped.
Since the article, it seems to only be up 190%.

I imagine that over the intervening period, some value investors independently
investigated the exact nature of Long Blockchain's technical innovations in
the distributed thirst-quenching space.

------
jondubois
Is this what Karl Marx had in mind when he said that capitalism would destroy
itself?

~~~
ep103
No, that would be the republican party.

------
Keyframe
Can't wait for books about the crash, like boo.com. That was a good read.

------
thrillgore
Did satirists just give up? This can't be real life.

------
jimmies
Anyone notices the screenshot? The price was at 13.37.

------
TheGrassyKnoll
"money for nothing and chicks for free"...

------
mr_data
This happens all the time whenever there is a "craze". When marijuana
companies were the craze, scammers who peddle stocks that sounded similar to
high flying stocks.

It happens during big IPOs.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-08/mistaken-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-08/mistaken-
identity-sends-snap-sound-alike-up-140-after-ipo-news)

It's pretty much a non-story but bloomberg has to make money with clickbait.

------
tehlike
Lots of opportunity to make quick bucks with shorting this. And riot
blockchain.

------
esseti
gold rush at its finest

------
sidcool
This does show how most share brokers/buyers trade.

------
techolic
For a moment I thought today is the first of April.

------
sharemywin
totally need to reverse merger a penny stock company and change it's name to
some blockchain company name.

I'm thinking:

Ageless, blockchain, AI VR company

~~~
vishbar
Visit my new startup's website,
[http://serverless.blockchain.ai/mongodb](http://serverless.blockchain.ai/mongodb)!

~~~
api
It's Bitcoin Scale!

~~~
DeltaWhy
So, 4 requests per second?

------
b0rsuk
They should've named it Long JavaScript !

------
ringaroundthetx
Is there an 8-K filing supporting this?

~~~
datamingle
None that I could see:

[https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-
edgar?CIK=LTEA&owner=excl...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-
edgar?CIK=LTEA&owner=exclude&action=getcompany)

~~~
ringaroundthetx
Might come after market close, but I think this is real judging from the other
things I've read

------
allandubey
Huh

------
dumbfounder
I can see the shark below...

------
down
Except the industrial value of gold which is around 10% of its use and not the
quality/pure one, how is gold better than bitcoin? The favorite argument and
the only argument is its history, yet when someone tries to use the same
historical argument of bitcoin going up and up for 7 years, the elitist, NY
folk will quickly follow with "Past performance is not an indicator of future
outcomes".

I think people here are just salty because they think they are smart yet
didn't saw the value in the crypto/blockchain, especially that is up their
geeky alley.

~~~
ceejayoz
Good luck stealing a ton of gold using a keylogger.

~~~
down
if you keep a ton of gold in your house, good luck.. keeping it safe, there
are safe ways to keep bitcoin, cold storage, etc. is not like is impossible.

~~~
ceejayoz
It appears to be substantially easier to secure a ton of gold than the
equivalent amount of Bitcoin.

It's also a lot harder to accidentally lose.

~~~
down
right is so hard to buy a device from amazon or print some words on
plasticized paper and keep it safe, hell you can even memorize 12 words.

~~~
ceejayoz
Sure, assuming the Amazon device isn't a compromised counterfeit, the printer
isn't rooted, and the paper doesn't get burned up in a house fire.

Case in point: [https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-
of-...](https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-of-losing-
dollar30000-in-bitcoin/)

~~~
down
yes, this is what hold bitcoin back but is getting better, the amazon device
can be software signed, also you could encrypt your keys and upload to all
cloud hosts.

------
timeout27
Just dont let the funny-facts divert you from the important concepts: bitcoin
= money-without-banks, first time in human history

~~~
pmlnr
> money-without-banks, first time in human history

... please google 'salt as currency'

------
chrischen
Unqualified Americans can’t invest in startups or ICOs. Blockchaina are the
only assets that are growing that they can invest in. That deosn’t even
include the rest of the world.

~~~
ForHackernews
The S&P 500 is up 86.95% over the last 5 years. Is that "not growing" in your
mind?

