After quietly rising in public consciousness for years, cryptocurrency like Bitcoin has exploded onto the mainstream — and in price — in recent months as large-scale investors and celebrity entrepreneurs have been buying up huge quantities of the decentralized, blockchain-based monetary assets.
Hopping on this trend, one Philly company has decided to go all in with its commitment to cryptocurrency.
RushOrderTees is investing $1 million of its cash reserves in Bitcoin, Ethereum and a number of other cryptocurrencies within the next two months. With this move, the custom t-shirt printing company based in Northeast Philadelphia joins the likes of Elon Musk’s Tesla and Virginia-based MicroStrategy, which have made headlines in recent weeks for purchasing $1.5 billion and around $1.27 billion in Bitcoin, respectively.
RushOrderTees CEO and cofounder Mike Nemeroff already has experience investing in cryptocurrency and said the low risk and high reward of investing in bitcoin made his company’s decision to invest a simple one.
“I’ve been investing in crypto personally for three or four years,” he told Technical.ly. “It’s more than Bitcoin. It’s Ethereum and other currencies I’ve gotten used to over the last few years.”
Nemeroff explained that in the worst-case scenario, the investment would turn over a zero sum of investment. But in a more positive scenario, it would multiply the $1 million in bitcoin five times, bringing its value to $5 million in bitcoin.
Mike Nemeroff. (Courtesy photo)
Within the next two years, Nemeroff predicts that more companies will begin selling and accepting cryptocurrency. Payments company PayPal already allows users to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency. Once more companies start participating and cryptocurrency becomes more widely accepted, his company’s investment will seem more commonplace, he said.
For Nemeroff and his colleagues, the decision also affirms RushOrderTees’ status as a technology company: Just as Tesla is a tech company that happens to sell cars, he said, RushOrderTees is a tech company that happens to sell t-shirts.
Nemeroff has some tips for other companies hoping to also invest in bitcoin. It’s not something that can happen instantly and requires planning before one can begin making transactions, he said.
“It’s really easy to buy personally, but it takes more time to buy under your company properly,” he said. “Set up a Coinbase Prime account as soon as possible, because it takes a few weeks to get authenticated.”
It remains to be seen how much RushOrderTees’ investment in cryptocurrency will pay off, but the decision to start investing now shows how bitcoin is steadily becoming involved in the way leaders at companies think about the future.
Maybe Hoagcoin is next?
Michael Butler is a 2020-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.Before you go...
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