When American furniture retailer Ethan Allen’s stock price climbed more than 50% during the cryptocurrency market explosion earlier this year, some folks wondered: is it possible that some investors are buying the wrong ETH, confusing Ethan Allen for Ethereum?
This week, Ethan Allen effectively confirmed that speculation by announcing plans to change its stock ticker.
Late Wednesday, Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. announced that it will change its New York Stock Exchange ticker from ETH to ETD beginning on Monday, August 16. And to be very clear as to why, the firm cited confusion around the name of Ethereum’s own ETH cryptocurrency.
“We also believe this change will better differentiate Ethan Allen news from Ethereum news in search results, as Ethereum is often abbreviated as ETH,” said Chairman, President, and CEO Farooq Kathwari, in a release. Kathwari also cited the firm’s shift towards interior design services, with the new stock ticker using a “D” for “design.”
Ethan Allen’s stock price jumped from just over $20 at the start of the year to a 2021 high above $32 in May. However, much like the crypto markets until just recently, the stock price saw a precipitous decline after that, with Ethan Allen’s price currently sitting at $23.96 as of this writing. Still, the price is up more than 18% since the start of the year, with a nearly 3% bump since yesterday’s close of business.
Ethereum itself lost more than half of its value after setting an all-time high of nearly $4,357 on May 12. The wider cryptocurrency market tanked in May, due to factors such as Tesla announcing that it would no longer accept Bitcoin payments due to the environmental impact of mining, plus uncertainty around China’s crackdown on cryptocurrency. Ethereum’s price dipped below $2,000 on multiple occasions thereafter, most recently on July 21, per CoinGecko.
That price has gradually climbed over the last two weeks, however, and was amplified today by the launch of the London hard fork, an Ethereum network upgrade. The upgrade includes EIP-1559, which changes the way that transaction fees are calculated while also “burning” those fees, or removing some cryptocurrency from circulation.
More than 2,175 ETH ($6.1 million) has already been burned since this morning, and the new deflationary element—which trims the overall supply of ETH—is pegged as helping to boost the price today as well. ETH shot up about 7% this morning and currently sits at a price above $2,800, a level not held since early June.
