Despite Rumors, AriZona Iced Tea Still Costs 99 Cents And Will Apparently Be The Basis Of A New Cryptocurrency

A recent fake news post on Twitter declaring that the price of AriZona Iced Tea had been raised from 99 cents to $1.29 went viral over the last two days, but was rapidly debunked.

The AriZona Iced Tea company posted on Twitter saying that the can on the right, which seems to show a price of $1.29, is in Canadian dollars and not American dollars. For iced tea enjoyers in the United States, the price remains 99 cents like it always has.

Jokingly, the original poster, Twitter user PULL UP on meh (@__cordazzle), doubled down and refused to delete the false story.

Since 1992, AriZona Iced Tea has famously maintained a price of 99 cents for a 23-ounce can of the popular beverage, pledging not to budge the price regardless of inflationary pressures.

Amid soaring aluminum prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, some questioned whether CEO Don Vultaggio would raise the price, but he confirmed in a recent interview that he had no intention of doing so because “consumers deserve a deal and a break.”

People online have joked for a long while about what the consequences would be if the price ever rose.

The steadfast price of AriZona iced tea has even attracted the attention of people in the cryptocurrency world. A new stablecoin based on the drink has emerged and sold out within the first few days of its existence.

We intend to stabilize the fragile cryptocurrency ecosystem by creating a new token backed by a hard asset whose price has been constant for 30 years: AriZona Iced Tea.A new Stablecoin?? @cz_binance#Binance #BUSD pic.twitter.com/1FT63RzXEw

— Spidey_ElonFan (@spideycyp_155) May 24, 2022

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency that is pegged to a real-world asset. Most commonly, stablecoins are pegged to the U.S. dollar or the price of gold — the idea is that volatility decreases when a cryptocurrency is tied to something in the real world that will always have a certain value.

Stablecoins aren’t always stable, however, as shown by the collapse of Terra, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar that lost over 90 percent of its value and triggered a crypto crash just recently. Usually, stablecoins are supported by a reserve of the asset they are pegged to.

The new "USDTea" stablecoin is pegged to AriZona Iced Tea. So far, the founders have minted 1,000 coins and assured users they have 1,000 cans of Arizona tea in reserve, or, in their words:

Our self-audited asset pool consists of a decentralized federation of hard tea holdings supplemented by prospective tea futures.

Of course, "self-audited" and "prospective tea futures" sounds like a complicated way of saying the founders do not actually have 1,000 cans of AriZona iced tea yet. But the idea of pegging the coins to the cans should mean that, no matter what happens to the market, people will always be able to exchange a USDTea coin for one of those cans. According to the FAQs on the website, however, redeeming a coin for a 99-cent can of iced tea will incur a $20 processing fee.

The new AriZona Iced Tea stablecoin hopes to enter the Ethereum ecosystem. It appears to be at least partially a joke, with a whitepaper that is simply an odd meme of an AriZona Iced Tea can and many puns on the site about “liquidity.” But, it does seem to respond to a genuine demand among people online, many of whom have called for the creation of such a stablecoin in memes.

A stablecoin backed by Arizona iced tea pic.twitter.com/5CWjrYfJoV

— Romano (@RNR_0) May 14, 2022

Arizona Iced Tea is the OG stablecoin. Redeem a refreshing drink for 99 cents at your local convenience store. Holding the peg since 1994. pic.twitter.com/TohFoVsQmb

— ecoinometrics (@ecoinometrics) June 15, 2022