Market Chatter: Overstock CEO Considering Sale of
Post# of 186
01:22 PM EST, 12/13/2017 (MT Newswires) -- Overstock.com(OSTK) shares are higher by more than 7% following the publication of a Financial Times article Wednesday in which the company's CEO, Patrick Byrne discussed his plans to sell the retailing business to develop a global blockchain business focused on the property sector.
"One of the possibilities is I sell the (Overstock) business and we have all the capital we need" to fund the new venture, Byrne told the Financial Times. "I feel a great moral obligation to refocus my life around this," he added.
The new venture Byrne is referring to is a non-profit entity formed with Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto Polar called De Soto Inc. The organization intends to gather local informal ownership records into a blockchain database.
Overstock became the first major retailer to accept payments in bitcoin as a result of Byrne's "enthusiasm" for the cryptocurrency.