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January 3, 2022

Crypto: The 18th Brumaire of. . . Umm. . . RadioShack?

One of Karl Marx’s most famous quotes comes from The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, in which the father of modern socialism & failed game show contestant wrote that historical entities appear twice, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” I thought of that quote when I read this article about the rebirth of former consumer tech & electronics retailer RadioShack as – I’m not kidding – a cryptocurrency company. This excerpt says that RadioShack’s bizarre reincarnation is based on the supposed continuing power of its brand:

Although the RadioShack electronics retail chain essentially crumbled following bankruptcy filings in 2015 and 2017, the name has survived for 100 years. In a bid to make RadioShack relevant for another 100 years, the brand’s new owner is making a play for one of the hottest, and most controversial, emerging business sectors in the world — cryptocurrency.

Seeking to capitalize on RadioShack’s global brand name, Miami-based owner Retail Ecommerce Ventures is propelling RadioShack (once based in Fort Worth) into the promising yet murky territory of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is digital currency built on a technology platform known as blockchain; bitcoin is perhaps the best-known type of cryptocurrency. In November, the size of the global cryptocurrency market surpassed $3 trillion.

I wasn’t making the connection between RadioShack’s brand & cryptocurrency success, so I visited the website in search of some more information. I found plenty of it, but nothing that altered my first impression that the idea of leveraging RadioShack’s brand in the crypto space is a stretch. Here’s an excerpt from the RadioShack website’s explanation of the thinking behind this grand strategy:

Despite its pullback in the last 10 years, the brand is resolutely embedded in the global consciousness – ripe to be pivoted to lead the way for blockchain tech to mainstream adoption by other large brands. Remember, there is a real generational gap between the average crypto buyer (in some countries like India, it’s as low as age 24) and the average corporate, decision making, global CEO who averages age 68.

This demographic difference creates a substantial psychological barrier to crypto adoption. The older generation simply doesn’t trust the new-fangled ideas of the Bitcoin youth. Even worse, research finds that adults who are especially authoritarian, intelligent, and well-read (i.e. the CEO’s that RadioShack seeks to woo), have an even lower estimation of the younger age bracket.

The need for a bridge between the CEOs who control the world’s corporations and the new world of cryptocurrencies will most likely come in the form of a well-known, century-old brand.

RadioShack is perfect.

Perfect for what you ask? Well, the article explains that the concept is to get folks to exchange other cryptocurrencies for a new RADIO cryptocurrency token on RadioShack’s decentralized finance platform. The rest of the RadioShack’s new website tries to explain the business plan, but it does so by using the kind of now familiar crypto gibberish that just screams “run away!” to a Luddite like me. Here’s a representative sample:

The overall tokenomics philosophy follows the proprietary Nash-Equilibrium Token Defense (NETD) formula that was originally developed for the Atlas USV protocol by the common co-founders of Atlas USV and RadioShack DeFi

I suspect this kind of language may have the same off-putting effect on the company’s target audience – i.e., 68-year-old CEOs who run the world – that it had on me. Those old guys have nearly a decade on me, so if I can’t make heads or tails of why this is such a great idea, my guess is that they aren’t going to get it either.

John Jenkins