AMC Entertainment (AMC) is planning to accept Bitcoin as a payment for movie tickets and concessions by the end of the year, said the company's CEO on an earnings call for the period ended June 30, 2021.

The company aims to become the first theater chain to accept cryptocurrency as a payment option with this move.

Adam Aron, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer shared the plans on Monday while talking about it being high time for AMC to start playing on offense again. And crypto is part of this strategy, as he noted, “Many of our new shareholders also are quite enthusiastic about cryptocurrency.”

The first step towards this is having information technology systems in place to accept BTC online at all of its US theaters.

“I've had to learn more in the past six months about blockchain and cryptocurrency than I learned about it in the entire decade before that,” and this increased knowledge has given him the “confidence” to go with this move, said Aron.

But this is not all; while the company has no firm plans in place yet, they are all set to explore the crypto space.

“We also are in the preliminary stage of now exploring how else AMC can participate in this new burgeoning cryptocurrency universe, and we're quite intrigued by potentially lucrative business opportunity for AMC if we intelligently pursue further serious involvement with cryptocurrency.”

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The popular meme stock company is also ready to take part in the gaming opportunity, with the President of Epic Games being a member of the AMC Board of Directors.

“I cannot even count the number of times already that our shareholders have asked us to reach out and partner with GameStop. We're on the case. More to come.”

In its Q2, 2021 results, AMC actually beat the expectations with loss narrowing at 71 cents than the 91 cents expected and reporting revenue of $444.7 million higher than $382.1 million expected. But the CEO said their journey through the pandemic isn't finished, and they are “not yet out of the woods.”

AMC said 22 million guests visited its theaters during the second quarter, an increase from 7 million in Q1 but far off of the all-time quarterly record of 97 million tickets sold by AMC in Q2 2019.

“We are not taking a victory lap … We are still losing money; we are still burning cash,” Aron said during the earnings call.

“But we can see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

As of June 30, AMC had around $1.8 billion in cash and around $2 billion in liquidity available. The company avoided bankruptcy when its theaters were shut last year because it was able to raise cash, in part due to a “meme stock” frenzy.

The retail meme mania has sent the company's shares surging, which are currently trading at $33.80, halved since the $72.62 peak in early June but still up from about $2 at the beginning of this year.

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