$SHIB: Luxury Fitness Firm Equinox Group Now Accepts Shiba Inu at Its NYC Fitness Clubs

On Tuesday (May 3), Equinox Group, “an American luxury fitness company which operates several lifestyle brands”, has announced that it is accepting select cryptoassets for payment of membership fees at its Equinox fitness clubs in New York City.

Equinox says that it has started accepting crypto for payment — thanks to a partnership with crypto payment processor Bitpay — of the Annual Membership fee to its New York clubs.

BitPay, which is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in May 2011 by Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair. The goal was “to make it easy for businesses to accept bitcoin payments,” and by September 2013, over 10,000 merchants were accepting Bitcoin (BTC) with the help of BitPay. Currently, the company claims to be “the largest bitcoin payment processor in the world, serving businesses on 6 continents.” Amongst its backers are Index Ventures, Founders Fund, and Felicis Ventures.

The cost of the “Annual All-Access Membership” and the “Annual Destination Membership” are $4,044.15 and $4,545.75 respectively. According to an article posted on the Equinox website, people based in New York can pay for these two types of annual membership with crypto (note that “information on other markets will be announced at a later date”).

Besides Shiba Inu ($SHIB), the other cryptoassets that BitPay merchants can accept are Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and five USD-pegged stable coins (BUSD, DAI, GUSD, USDP, and USDC).

Equinox went on to say that in order to pay with crypto via BitPay,”prior to checking out” at https://crypto.equinox.com, anyone thinking of joining needs “to obtain a pre-approved BitPay ID.”