Bitcoin’s Tuesday rebound from a five-day rout has drawn investors back to US stocks related to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
Pareteum Corp more than doubled after saying it would add blockchain support to its billing and settlement services, enabling it to process bitcoin, ether and litecoin.
Riot Blockchain Inc rose 20 percent, while LongFin Corp added 38 percent. Both had fallen more than 30 percent in the past four days as bitcoin plunged from a record.
Photo: Reuters
The biggest cryptocurrency rose 15 percent to US$15,998.50 at 3:09pm in New York.
Bitcoin’s more than 1,500 percent rally this year has prompted investors to snap up shares in companies often seen as a safer alternative to investing directly in the cryptocurrency itself. When the digital coin tumbled last week, the proxy stocks slumped as well.
Still, the trend that has seen investors pour into all things crypto became a frenzy, as obscure microcap companies reoriented to focus on some aspect of the craze, resulting in astronomical stock gains sparked simply by a name change.
The phenomenon reached a peak last week when Long Island Iced Tea Corp shares rose 238 percent after the company rebranded itself Long Blockchain Corp. The company’s stock fell 9.1 percent on Tuesday. It is still up more than 150 percent since the name change.
Bitcoin Investment Trust, a structured note that tracks the price of the digital token, jumped 22 percent. The publicly traded vehicle’s price exceeded the value of the bitcoin it holds by almost 100 percent three days ago.
On Track Innovations Ltd rose 8.7 percent, while Seven Stars Cloud Group added 10 percent and Digital Power Corp advanced 6.3 percent. Overstock.com Inc and Xunlei Ltd (迅雷) also gained.
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