AMC says it will accept bitcoin as payment for movie tickets

[Marcel Birgelen]

The whole idea of getting rid of those mag-stripe readers was to avoid the massive skimming going on on payment terminals.

[Harold Hallikainen]

The AMC mobile app for US theaters now accepts Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and other cryptocurrencies

https://ca.style.yahoo.com/amc-mobil...185601348.html

Lauren Forristal
Mon, April 18, 2022, 11:56 a.m.·2 min read



Those of you who bought Dogecoin as a joke can use them toward movie tickets at AMC. The largest movie theater chain in the U.S., AMC Theaters, has been openly pro-crypto, and the CEO recently announced its mobile app will now accept Dogecoin (DOGE), Shibu Inu (SHIB) and other cryptocurrencies.

The names of the other newly supported cryptocurrencies are yet to be revealed. TechCrunch has reached out for a comment and will update this if they get back to us.

n the tweet, Aron revealed that customers in the U.S. can update the latest version of the AMC Theatres' iOS and Android mobile apps to use crypto payments via integration with BitPay.

Dogecoin was accepted by AMC Theaters in October 2021, but only through digital gift cards (up to $200 per day). Its plans to begin accepting crypto were announced in August, however, it wasn't until January 6, 2022, when the CEO of AMC Theatres, Adam Aron, promised users via a tweet to include meme tokens DOGE and SHIB by March. While delayed, the company delivered, appeasing the impatient Dogecoin fans.

The company first started accepting crypto payments back in November, which allowed customers to purchase movie tickets online using Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC). After the announcement, social media erupted with Dogecoin fans demanding the meme cryptocurrency be accepted as well. Aron tweeted a poll, asking whether they would use DOGE to make purchases at AMC. More than two-thirds voted yes.

According to Aron, crypto payments accounted for 14% of total online transactions.

Paying for popcorn and tickets using DOGE is simple, for the most part. All you have to do is select BitPay as your payment method once you have added your AMC tickets to your cart. Then you just connect your crypto wallet or get an address where you can send your chosen cryptocurrency.

[Randy Stankey]

Didn't we recently go through a stage, in the 1990s, of trying to simplify currency exchange by enacting the Euro?
People didn't want to have to trade Francs for Lire or Dollars or whatever. The European Union created the Euro just for that reason.

So, why now do people think it's good to have new, strange currencies?

To top it all off, crypto exists only on computers. What happens if there is a power failure or some other tech-disaster? Your money is gone!
We could say that the same thing can happen with banks but we have laws to guard against those problems. Banks have backup systems in place, too. (By law?)
With crypto, there's no guarantee that your money will be there tomorrow.

I don't have a problem with people who want to "diversify" but crypto seems like a pretty dumb way to do it.

[Ed Gordon]

See: You Can Buy More Things Than Ever With Crypto. Here’s Why You Shouldn’t

Don’t Pay With Bitcoin


Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, was originally intended to be used exactly like money. Its white paper dubbed it a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system.” But Bitcoin’s frequent and volatile price fluctuations make that unrealistic in practice.

“The price volatility kind of makes it useless as an electronic cash system,” says Ollie Leech, learn editor at CoinDesk, a leading cryptocurrency news outlet. “No person in their right mind would want to buy a coffee with Bitcoin. Say you pay $3 for the coffee, and tomorrow your Bitcoin could be worth $30. That’s a loss.”

Just one year ago, in June 2020, Bitcoin’s value was under $10,000. Since then, it reached a high of more than $64,000 and, despite a recent price drop, remains close to $40,000. Imagine a video game that cost $50 worth of Bitcoin last June. If you waited until today to buy it instead, the same price in Bitcoin today would now cost you $200.

People buy Bitcoin “not because they expect to be able to go to the store and spend it, but because they expect it to hold its value,” says Galen Moore, director of data and indexes at CoinDesk.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

There is an entire town in Nicaragua that only accepts bit coin.

[Bobby Henderson]

I still think the whole crypto thing is going to "jump the shark" sometime pretty soon. I think the crypto game is just attracting "suckers" now. The people who've made the most money off the scheme have already done so. It's ridiculous for businesses like AMC to try to normalize crypto currency. The stuff could be worthless as Monopoly game money pretty soon.

Some thoughts on credit card use:

Here in Oklahoma it's illegal for businesses to add on credit card surcharges to a purchase. On the other hand, it's also legal for businesses to be cash-only and refuse to take cards or personal checks either. Cash-only operation is pretty common at restaurants in smaller towns. The town of Medicine Park near Lawton and next to the Wichita Mountains is booming with tourism business. A bunch of the visitors from the OKC, Tulsa and DFW areas keep the ATMs very busy.

I tend to use cash for all my small in-store purchases, like buying a few items at the grocery store. I think it's stupid to use a credit card to buy something trivial like a soft drink or a candy bar. People do it all the time though. And stores taking Visa and Mastercard cannot set minimum purchase limits. I've seen TV commercials that try to imply using cash for purchases slows down a cash register operation. Based on what I've seen in real life the cards slow down things more.

If I have to go to Walmart I usually use the self check-out registers. I have nothing against the human cashier employees. It's the fucking customers that are the problem. They slow down a human-run check-out lane like crazy. The self check-out lanes are limited to cash and credit/debit. That keeps things simple. The humans running their registers have to deal with all kinds of extra shit. Every damned person in the human-run line has all kinds of custom crap they need done. "Like put all this stuff here on the food stamps card and this stuff on another card. And then do the same with my partner's stuff there." Then the next guy wants to pay for his shit with a paper check and take forever writing it out. They'll go through their coupon collection, carefully reading each one, for good measure. Half the people in the human-run cashier lane have shopping carts over-flowing with stuff, like they're getting ready for Armageddon. I'm not putting up with that. Even if there is a long line for the box of self-checkout registers it will still move faster than a couple or so customers in a human-run lane.

I think it's more like abdicating responsibility and relying on technology as a means to be lazy.

That's a big part of it.

Generally people over-estimate what technology can do. I deal with some of this in graphics work. Customers think all I have to do is rattle some gibberish into the computer keyboard for a few seconds and "poof" they'll have a finished vehicle wrap design. They basically believe all the Hollywood bullshit with how computing technology is depicted in TV shows and movies.

Some people are lazy enough to let technology do the thinking for them in critical situations, like driving a vehicle. I can't help but laugh at someone who drives through the dead end of a "T" intersection because his GPS showed the road continuing through the intersection. Then there's the douchebags in their Tesla cars flagrantly taking risks with the auto-drive feature. Laziness is everywhere in American society, not just in the bottom income levels.

Those people at Wendy's could have made due with a pencil and a piece of paper plus, maybe, a calculator. They could have taken orders by hand and written everything down. When the computers came back on line, the manager could have typed the orders in by hand. Instead, they rely on computers to such a degree that, without them, they can only stand there with their dicks in their hands.

Low wage businesses like fast food restaurants get what they pay for in employee quality with their shitty wages and limited work schedules. I think any adult should be proficient in basic math skills. On the other hand $8 an hour here in Oklahoma isn't likely to attract self-reliant "talent" with possible management potential either.

The same goes for digital cinema. I don't care how may excuses people make about digital movies being cheaper or more efficient or anything. It's all just bullshit.
The real reason is because people are just too damn lazy to do their jobs.

In the case of digital cinema, that technology was developed to eliminate jobs. It's not the fault of the projectionists, other than needing to be paid a wage. D-cinema systems are increasingly automated in their operation, even remotely automated. That way there are fewer mouths to feed in terms of theater employees, both in terms of managers and minimum wage staff. At our local AMC 13-plex the IMAX house is the only house with a real booth. The projectors in all the other auditoriums are locked in tiny broom closets up in the back center of the seating area.