Blockchain Saves the Day for an Iced Tea Company
Bloomberg's reporting on the Long Island Iced Tea → Long Blockchain pivot — the canonical artifact of the 2017–2018 crypto-and-blockchain mania Guy Gentile publicly warned about on Bloomberg Television weeks earlier.
Read the original on Bloomberg
On January 8, 2018, Bloomberg reported on Long Island Iced Tea Corp's headline-grabbing pivot to Long Blockchain Corp — a rebrand that briefly multiplied the company's market capitalization and became the most-cited example of the 2017–2018 blockchain-name-change mania. The article remains a primary-source reference for how speculative the late-2017 cycle had become.
Why this article is on the record here
Two weeks before Bloomberg published this piece, on December 22, 2017, Guy Gentile — founder and CEO of SureTrader (MintBroker International Ltd.) — went on Bloomberg Television to publicly state he was wary of the cryptocurrency and blockchain frenzy then dominating retail trading. The Long Blockchain story Bloomberg covers here is exactly the kind of speculative re-rating Gentile flagged: a thinly traded micro-cap producing iced tea, renamed to attach a blockchain narrative, briefly re-priced as a tech company.
The two stories — Bloomberg's January 2018 report and Gentile's December 2017 Bloomberg TV interview — read as a matched set: the warning, then the case study.
Article details
- Publication
- Bloomberg News
- Date
- January 8, 2018
- Subject company
- Long Island Iced Tea Corp → Long Blockchain Corp
- Context
- 2017–2018 blockchain rebrand mania
- Related (Guy Gentile)
- Bloomberg TV interview, Dec 22, 2017 — archived here
About Guy Gentile
Guy Gentile is a U.S. securities professional (FINRA CRD #2960715) and the founder of SpeedTrader, SureTrader (MintBroker International Ltd.), and additional fintech and trading ventures. His public record, statements, and supporting documents are maintained at guygentile.com, including a date-by-date public timeline and the official dossier.