The nearly 100-year-old legacy magazine also started letting sponsors pay in Bitcoin for ad campaigns, with crypto asset manager Grayscale signing the first deal two weeks ago.
Current subscribers will not be asked to switch to the crypto payment options, according to Maya Draisin, svp of progress marketing.
“Store of value” is a similar tactic as to why people invest in gold, according to Francesco Marconi, the CEO of Applied XL and former R&D and strategy leads of The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press.
“It’s an additive business line for us that doesn’t come at the expense of anything else.
Time’s Bitcoin investment is comparable to it holding a foreign currency on its books or investing in gold, said Peter Jensen, CEO of RocketFuel Blockchain added.
In a way, crypto could be a breath of fresh air for an industry constantly pressured to change.
Time is also investing in crypto by growing its technology team under chief technology officer Bharat Krish.
Last month, Time broke into the NFT market by launching a collection of three non-fungible tokens of digital magazine covers that were auctioned off to the highest bidder.
For example, existing assets like Time’s online cover store, where it sells copies and prints of its covers, can be transformed into an NFT shop operated more like an art gallery.