For years, electronics retailer RadioShack used the slogan, “You’ve got obtained questions, we have got solutions.”
After the moribund chain’s newest transfer, individuals have lots of questions.
Over the weekend, the corporate confirmed a pivot into decentralized finance (DeFi), the identify for blockchain-based protocols that enable individuals to ship, obtain, commerce, lend, and borrow funds with out intermediaries.
RadioShack DeFi, the website now reads, “would be the bridge between the CEO’s [sic] who management the world’s firms and the brand new world of cryptocurrencies.”
In line with paperwork on the web site, “RadioShack, and RadioShack alone, can bridge the hole and ‘cross the chasm’ of mainstream utilization for Cryptocurrency.”
(When you’re elevating your hand to ask a query, we see you.)
The web site touts a partnership with Atlas USV (common retailer of worth), a DeFi protocol that enables purposes to be constructed atop it. RadioShack DeFi goals to start by making a decentralized trade (DEX) within the vein of Uniswap or Sushiswap that faucets into liquidity swimming pools. This mannequin lets token holders commerce immediately for some other token.
Atlas’s Ethereum-based token USV is new sufficient that it is not even one of many 10,000+ belongings tracked by CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap, although it may be traded on DEXs. In line with RadioShack, the protocol “permits USV customers to buy third-party tokens within the open market after which switch them to the Atlas USV treasury in return for discounted USV tokens.”
When you’ve by no means heard of Atlas USV, which is supplying the know-how for the enterprise, you may not be shocked to listen to that it is the brainchild of Alex Mehr and Tai Lopez—the identical males who bought RadioShack last year.
Lopez confirmed in a video posted on December 11 that he’s “taking RadioShack on the blockchain, it’s going to be the primary large mainstream model that flipped fully right into a crypto.” He additionally teased the upcoming launch of Atlas USV.
RadioShack, a once-ubiquitous electronics retailer, could not climate the e-commerce growth; it filed for chapter in 2015 and once more in 2017. It is since carved out a humble existence post-bankruptcy as a elements provider for HobbyTown USA whereas maintaining a number of hundred franchised retailers open and sustaining a web based retailer. Retail Ecommerce Ventures (REV), run by CEO Mehr and Government Chairman Lopez, purchased it in 2020.
In actual fact, REV owns lots of the chains that used to outline U.S. retail, together with Pier1, Linens ‘N Issues, and DressBarn. Its basic technique is to pivot failing retailers away from storefronts and into e-commerce, whereas courting co-investors to pitch in. They’re type of like home flippers, solely they deal in rejuvenating the picture of defunct legacy manufacturers.
(Okay, put your hand down, as a result of we’re about to reply what you actually need to know.)
Sure, RadioShackSwap (or no matter its identify turns into) will launch its personal token: RADIO.
members of the general public can join a notification of the launch, however the plan is to distribute 10 billion RADIO tokens. The corporate hasn’t but shared how—or to whom—they are going to be distributed.
Except, after all, Mehr and Lopez are pranking everybody in crypto.
So, with RADIO coming quickly, the pure subsequent query is: Wen Pier1 token?
The perfect of Decrypt straight to your inbox.
Get the highest tales curated day by day, weekly roundups & deep dives straight to your inbox.
