(Reuters) – Shares of blockchain-focused company BTCS Inc shot up on Thursday as more investors purchased them after last week’s announcement that it would pay bitcoin dividends.

Silver Spring, Maryland-based firm has more than doubled its stock since Jan. 5 when it suggested that it would pay $0.05 per Bitcoin share to all who choose it. On March 16, it will issue its first bitcoin dividend or “bividend,” as BTCS calls them.

BTCS shares rose by 20% in trading early Thursday, to $7.80 for a six week high. This was due to the growing online excitement over the plan in forums like Reddit and stocktwits.com which played a key role in last year’s “meme stock” frenzy.

In the opening minutes of trading nearly 9 million BTCS shares were traded. This is more than twice the public float of 4.2million shares. Sharp moves are possible because the stock has a smaller free-float share count.

Charles Allen, CEO, stated that “this is the moment we had long anticipated since bividend.com was purchased by the Company in February 2015.” He made the statement in a statement on Wednesday.

BTCS was last valued at $69 Million. It claims to be first Nasdaq-listed company to provide bitcoin dividends. GameStop (NYSE 🙂 saw its shares jump up to 22% in Friday’s trading. The company plans to create a nonfungible tokens marketplace (NFTs).

Since their all-time peak in December last year, the prices of volatile cryptocurrency cryptocurrencies has fallen. Thursday’s closing price was $44,306.29, 36% less than the peak.