Short-term rental service Airbnb has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for its planned initial public offering. In it, the company recognizes the possibility of adding cryptocurrency payments in the future.
“Our future success will be dependent on the ability to adapt to new technologies such as tokenization, introduction of cryptocurrencies, and emerging authentication technologies,” she writes.
Further, Airbnb mentions distributed ledger and blockchain along with biometrics, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality as likely important directions for future development.
“As a result, we intend to continue to invest substantial resources to support and develop our technologies and platforms. However, these initiatives may be much more costly than predicted and may not be successful,” adds Airbnb.
Airbnb previously said it had no plans to accept Bitcoin on its service, although it acquired a cryptocurrency donation start-up ChangeTip in 2016.
In the filed documents, the company writes that it was able to end the third quarter of 2020 with a profit, despite the restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic, which directly affected its business. To do this, it had to cut costs dramatically and cut a quarter of its employees in the second quarter.
