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Overtock founder and CEO Patrick Byrne announced Friday that he plans to sell the retail business of his e-commerce company to focus solely on his other blockchain startups.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal announced that Byrne was so excited about Blockchain's technology that he was considering finalizing the sale of his e-commerce business as early as February 2019. This report had allowed the company to 39, acquire more than 20% shares on Friday. .
But in a statement to FOX Business, Byrne suggested that the sale might not take place as soon.
"Although it is possible for me to" reach an agreement by February, "I think the following is a more specific statement of my beliefs and intentions," he said. "I think the right thing to do for shareholders is to separate the value of distribution companies and block chains (especially tZERO), and I can do it by removing tZERO in 13 months (that is, to say, December 2019) outside. TZERO is a subsidiary of Blockchain of Overstock.
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Byrne said the values could be separated by selling the company's retail sector, but that he hoped to be completed in a few months. There is also the possibility of separating companies 13 months in advance through a tax-free spin-off, he said.
"In my eyes, that's when something strategic would be done," he said.
Byrne declined to name potential contenders, but said he was confident that next year there will be a strategic separation of the company's components for retail and blockchain, which "could be produce as early as February ".
Byrne, who founded Overstock in 1999 to sell discounted products such as furniture and jewelery on the Internet, has been an avid follower of blockchain for years.
He told the Journal that he planned to sell his ecommerce business since 2017 in order to devote himself entirely to some of his blockchain startups that he had developed through his subsidiary Medici Ventures.
Byrne said that he had invested more than $ 175 million in Medici and that, despite losing more than $ 22 million in 2017 and more than $ 39 million in 2018, the company and its technology, including its tZero trading system, were the future.
"I do not care if ZERO loses $ 2 million a month," Byrne told the Journal. "We think we have a cold fusion on the side of the blockchain."
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