Cinemagoers will soon be able to pay using Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB) after AMC CEO Adam Aron confirmed the company will begin accepting SHIB as an online payment from March 19.
Announcing the decision on Twitter, Aron revealed he personally lobbied BitPay, the blockchain payment company used by AMC, to support Shiba Inu, which continues to push forward with new projects on its roadmap.
“AMC will be the first BitPay client to accept Shiba Inu,” he said.
AMC To Accept SHIB Payments
According to Aron, AMC will support Shiba Inu Coin and Dogecoin payments on its website from March 19 via BitPay. This support will come to its mobile app a month later on April 16.
Dogecoin creator Billy Markus responded to Aron, stating: "Thank you for the initiative. [It] will be fun to go to a meme theatre paying with meme money."
This is slightly later than the 60-120 day period in which Aron initially said the SHIB support would come in.
This comes after a Twitter poll by Aron that asked if AMC should accept SHIB gained 153,000 votes - 86% of which were in favour.
AMC also accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.
Following Aron’s announcement, the ShibArmy celebrated the decision as another step towards mainstream adoption.
The official Shiba Inu account thanked Aron in a tweet. “We love SHIB and we love movies,” it said. “Thank you to [Adam Aron] and BitPay, we are excited to have you form part of the ShibArmy family.”
Tyler Winklevoss, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, which also started accepting SHIB this week, celebrated the decision.
BitPay is not the first payment provider to support SHIB, however. The likes of NOWPayments already allow customers to spend SHIB on its supported platforms. Despite the several petitions lobbying the company, Amazon does not currently accept SHIB, and Tesla looks more likely to implement a DOGE payment method, too.