Shares in a little-known tech firm are up more than 65% in pre-market trading this morning after after it announced it was preparing to launch a beta version of its Bitcoin trading platform.
Pennsylvania-based WPCS says it recently acquired BTXTrader, which is developing what it says is the first trading platform allowing Bitcoin users to "access market data and execute orders on the five most popular Bitcoin exchanges in a single application."
"Obviously, we are still in development mode, but we're on schedule to release both web and mobile versions of our platform by early 2014," BTX Trader Chief Operating Officer, Ilya Subkhankulov, said in the release.
The firm's shares surged more than 20% to $1.81 on heavy volume in after-hours trading yesterday. We first saw the story on Marketwatch as reported by Wallace Witkowski.
Very little has been written about WPCS, which bills itself as a communications infrastructure firm. They IPO'd in 2003 at more $140 and spent the next 10 years going to practically zero.
This past January they received a delisting warning from NASDAQ for failing to comply with the minimum $1 per share rule, but ultimately got a reprieve. Their market cap is a little more than $2 million.
This kind of thing is common, as no-name penny stock companies frequently jump on hot trends in hopes of stoking interest.
The "tour" of the Bitcoin platform is a series of GIFs. We've reached out to the firm for comment.
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