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Airbnb may have changed its mind about cryptocurrencies, according to the prospectus for its planned initial public offering (IPO).
Filed Monday at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the prospectus says its “future success will depend … on our ability to adapt to emerging technologies such as tokenization, cryptocurrencies, [and] new authentication technologies. ”
It also lists distributed ledger and blockchain technologies, as well as biometrics, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and cloud technologies, as possibly key at a future time.
Although the information is provided in the “Risk Factors” section of the document, it also states that:
“As a result, we intend to continue to spend significant resources to maintain, develop and improve our technologies and platform. However, these efforts may be more expensive than expected and may not be successful.”
Airbnb has already said it has no plans to start accepting bitcoin as a means of payment, even though this came after the company acquired the ChangeTip cryptocurrency service team in 2016.
If the vacation rental giant were to make an announcement about cryptocurrencies, it would send a new shockwave to the industry and beyond. It happened when PayPal, after years of speculation, announced a cryptocurrency purchase service last month.
For the IPO, Airbnb is planning to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select market under the “ABNB” symbol. Reuters indicated it expects to raise about $ 3 billion in the offering, valuing the company at over $ 30 billion.
The company revealed in the prospectus that it was able to make a profit in the third quarter of 2020, despite being hit by the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Some decentralized projects have come up with the goal of competing with Airbnb using blockchain technology, but none have seen great success to date.
