Overstock to Sell the Retail Business and Focus on Cryptocurrency

Online retail giants Overstock are looking to sell the retail business and shift focus on cryptocurrency, this is according to recent emerging reports. Overstock was in a partnership with Coinbase which allowed it to accept Bitcoin as a way of payments in the online retail stores.

In a statement, the chief Executive officer Patrick Byrne recounted,” It has been quite a journey because we were the first company to hit it big in online sales using Bitcoin.” He went ahead to say, “At the time, specifically 2014, the leading company was a restaurant in Western Australia that was making $800,000 in a year. We came along and took that a step further by earning $1.4billion.”

Going all-in on crypto

The decision to go all in on cryptocurrency is being fueled by Byrne’s burning desire to see Medici ventures’ investment on Tzero work. Tzero is a new and upcoming securities token exchange program. Although the company was founded in 2014, it has not had the best of fortunes. Tzero has been recording losses since the time it began operations.

The exchange token will be making its launch in early 2019. According to reports, this is not a program that will be looked forward to because of its poor performance on income generation. Mr Byrne has been very persistent and consistent with keeping this project going. This has been so despite the fact that the company has been making monthly losses. In 2017, the losses amounted to $22 million, and $39 million in the first three quarters of 2018.

” I do not really care whether the company is making a $2 million loss every month, I think that it is a low that is being experienced at the time in which we will get through. I believe crypto is the future,” remarked an optimistic Byrne.

Byrne is willing to put everything on the blockchain project. His optimism and will are to savour, only the future will tell whether his belief is well-placed.