As Matt describes it in his bio, he writes about the financial industry on the internet, and on the Bloomberg terminal, which is sort of like the internet but oranger. BeSpacific - 3rd Place. In contrast, speculation is used twice to promote crypto and bookends the article. Near the start, Whatever is left in crypto is not just speculation and get-rich-quick schemes., Now the speculative frenzy has, if not disappeared, at least cooled.. I gotta study the Levine piece in detail before rendering any rational opinions. WebMatt Levine's Money Stuff. But Bitcoin has no cash flows; its price represents what people are willing to pay for it. In the interest of brevity, I wont walk through those arguments, but you can certainly do so yourself if you have Google and half an hour to spare. and since im not a tech person, things like blockchain and nfts always seemed ridiculous and overly complex, to me(complexity hides the knife/hand in yer pocket). If I wrote an all encompassing Crypto Story, I might be inclined to discuss the possibility for a vast criminal conspiracy at the heart of the industry, but thats just me. The glow of US/globalized prestige is real.
This quote comes almost 9/10ths of the way into the article and is given within the context of Terra, one of the industrys most obvious and famous grifts. Why is the most forceful statement about speculation made in the context of Kwon artists? When discussing speculation in relation to Bitcoin words like might be and big business are used. This characterization seems odd to me. If this is The Only Crypto Story You read, you would be forgiven for thinking that the issue of speculative mania applies more to web3 than it does to Bitcoin or Ethereum. persuasive: I didnt dump stocks, I am a well-advised rich person, someone Matt Levine. from me is a good defense! Thank you for the column and the response. When we dont criticize facts that we know are wrong or misstated, we wind up in a situation where the lies spread, the public fails to understand reality, and then everyone is surprised when an FTX happens (except those well versed in crypto). Nowhere in The Crypto Story is the concept of crypto market cap challenged or explained in detail. By uncritically mentioning cryptos multi-trillion dollar market cap 9 times, Levine, a Harvard educated financial expert, embeds a lie into the unconscious of the reader. Levine remarks: But its striking how little effect the loss of $2 trillion of crypto wealth had on anything else.. : Matthew Brooker, Matt Levines Money Stuff: The Good Hedge Funds Always Get Paid. In the past decade, there have been over 600 tender offers, of which only 25 were terminated. Wonderful discussion today. you can also get the Money Stuff articles as an Capital Allocators Inside the Institutional Investment Industry. Sign up now so you dont miss the first issue. Is this so, is it scalable, does this mean it might have real world utility? Not misguided, not misplaced and not any other more generous adjective either. Paying bribes to get public benefits is, The big news in the world of high-frequency trading isthat the Securities and Exchange Commission is planning toamend Rule 15b9-1 to require that broker-dealers trading in off-exchange venues become members of a national securities association.. A breakup with JIP et al would cost 2 billion yen, so any offer would have to take this fee into account and make a new deal worth it.. Lately my favorite read has been Matt Levines Money Stuff articles We airfreighted billions in bills to Iraq. Levine was there to explain what But heavyweight hedge funds couldonly go so far., It wont get much better. Many many pallets. A Medicaid Catastrophe Is Looming. It is illegal to run a crypto derivatives exchange in the US without registering it with the CFTC, and its not exactly easy to do that either; if you have a crypto derivatives exchange abroad but have not registered it in the US,it is illegal to let US customers trade on it. Some five or six years ago I had a conversation with a man who was a big crypto enthusiast ( If he got out in time he did REALLY well) that ended with Tom, you just dont get it, Crypto is a CONCEPT. Im a retired, Parkinsons-addled old school risk analyst who did a stint in subprime (where we made successive record profits every year off our halt-and-lame lawful prey). Levine on the other hand may consider it to be another one of those things thats an odd use of time. Instead of being incentivized to make something useful that people want to use, crypto is costly, it demands value from users. The incentive for economic agents in such a system is to onboard as many participants as possible while doing as little real work as is required. Rather than supply side incentives for the production of positive economic output, we get weird distributed corporate bonds (tokens) where, in the case of PoW, the invested value is destroyed instead of transferred to a corporation (as with PoS). Centralized exchanges are responsible for the majority of the fiat money being ingested by crypto. The very same people setting token prices that determine market cap have a vested interest in seeing the value of these tokens increase by as much as possible. Even excluding the money extracted from the public by exchange owners through the sale of personal crypto holdings or outright embezzlement, greater valuations serve as a recruitment tool to ingest more fiat liquidity, and more marks (customers) result in more fees. After reading through my notes, theres at least another dozen problems worth covering, but I cant because this article already risks being longer than The Crypto Story. The issues range from minor misunderstandings, to the flat wrong, to internalized crypto propaganda. It is a $13 There are look, there are notnoaccusations that Binance is laundering money for terrorists or secretly trading against its customers, but there are relatively few accusationslike that; again, as crypto exchanges go, thats pretty good. Levine identifies whats good for the economy and he points out that crypto doesnt do these good things, but he never manages connect the two facts and just say out loud that crypto is bad for the economy and for the civilization that depends on people doing useful things. dip price. was more legitimate and sustainable than it was, etc., but the By. Well done, Yankee imperialism. recently, the ETF investors lose $20their entire investmentand, uh, I think they already conceded that they were somehow all Russian. Very, Trump Indictment Is a Risky Bet for New York and the Nation, China Is Walking a Tightrope With the US. (Kelly Loeffler, for My impression at the time was nothing of real value could come out of such silly nonsense. shareholders. Easy, unload 20% of your contracts at a bizarre low price, to make the and cash, whenever i can. and those ape images being closely connected to the Crypto/Blockchain world I do not understand.
About. else has to come up with the other $37.63 per barrel. Of course you'd expect that the executives would be criminally For people in Venezuela and some other sanctioned countries, or even just countries with high inflation like Argentina, or dodgy banking systems like Nigeria, the criminal activity was trying to save money and be part of the global middle class. They dont need to be covert. His newsletter, Money Stuff, is one of the most popular on Wall Street with over 150k subscribers. I think they are both morbid symptoms of too much easy money flooding the financial system. But you can barely use it to buy real world stuff. Anjani Trivedi is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. So you can take my explanation of market cap and cash flow as a general statement. , A financial system is bad if it trades abstract claims in ways that enrich the people doing the trading but dont help anyone else.. Almost every issue teaches me something interesting I didn't know, and Hes very careful to never commit to scenarios in his own speculation. There is even an RSS. Will be forwarding the link around. I dont share this belief but I recognize that this is the modus operendi of both Wall Street and Crypto.
But they are barely being used in real world commerce.1 Their connection to tax avoidance/evasion suggest that even using them for large transactions might attract undue attention of the anti-money-laundering police. million dollars. Sure they were deceived, and sure the stock price was That is what is giving me most pain now. A $15 Billion Buyout? Levine has a large public platform, and if hes going to be writing articles which influence public opinion, he needs to up his game.
It just supported the deal.
The word confidence, in the sense of trust, is repeated, typically by people who inspire no trust themselves, and resonates like a hammer blow every time it is read. There are other niggling issues, too. basis. Matt Levines Money Stuff: Big Banks Give First Republic Money. NFTs are discussed after that. Instead, Levine legitimizes cryptos market cap, its centralized exchanges, and even the biggest scammiest elephant in the room, Tether. Lately my favorite read has been Matt Levines Money Stuff articles from Bloomberg News. Previously, she was a columnist for the Wall Street Journals Heard on the Street and a finance & markets reporter for the paper. Mergers & Acquisitions March 27, 2023, 11:39 AM Matt Levines Money Stuff:
On the other hand, I enjoy Matts writing, and some of his insights are valuable and informative, one of my favorites is from the section on trust: Crypto is in a way about rejecting the institutions of society, about being trustless and censorship-resistant. You arent incorrect, and while I would have loved to include an indictment of what are existing rent seeking monopolies in the real economy, I wanted to focus on the difference between equities and crypto. Unfortunately, the idea of crypto was so appealing to these folks and the actual supply of coins so scarce and expensive that unscrupulous players were able to create a massive arbitrage in them. trade; if your investment manager sold your stocks without input If they can get the close-of-day was really going on and why. SBF minted some FTT coins he sold on his exchange, except he only made a small percentage available to the general public for trading purposes. Wall Street just like crypto, is constantly scheming to push up or crash prices in order to profit. The Crypto Story is a comprehensive tour de force and an excellent general overview of cryptos past and present, however, its view on cryptos future is at best naive, and at worst potentially harmful to the unaware. Despite all of Levines warnings, mockery, and colourful language, the failure to identify and highlight crypto disinformation puts those unfamiliar with the industrys fundamental flaws at risk. Though I do not think Levine intended it, his portrayal of crypto as the early days of an innovative new technology could cause members of the public to invest money into an industry whose collapse is inevitable. The following youtube video about NFTs has received ongoing praise for the clarity and intelligence of its expose. This is an odd topic to have thought about a lot I admit But like Sal Bayat mentions, Matt Levine is an excellent writer so theres a lot of stylistic choices to think about on top of the subject matter in his columns haha! It arrives at most once per day. The underlying tenet here is If you cant see who the mark is in any scheme, its likely to be you. You could Any other offers are likely to draw the process out for a lot longer and adding years to this drama is the last thing investors need, especially as Toshibas financial health shows few signs of improvement. They use the same channels to move Money, Materiel and Personnel as criminal organizations do and it is a mutually beneficial situation, a symbiotic relationship between parasites that share the same host.
It's thought that many planetary bodies in our solar system contain liquid water deep below their icy surfaces. The corruption and injustice of the existing financial system, the de-industrialization and financialization of our economy, has driven millions into the waiting arms of crypto con artists. The public has been made desperate from decades of stagnating or declining real wages, and Cryptovangelists have been quick to inculcate the flock and prepare the faithful for a good fleecing. Despite identifying all of its pieces, this cruel irony appears to be lost on Levine. I live not for myself; but the world will not have confidence in me, and yet confidence in me were great gain. we shouldnt have needed such a lesson, after 2008at least he mentions CDOs and tranches and all In the meantime, tell your friends! After 40,000 words, the reader is told, Were still early!, And the answer is, you know, maybe, give it time., If the world is increasingly software and advertising and online social networking and, good Lord, the metaverse, then the crypto financial system doesnt have to build all the way back down to the real world to be valuable. Long after the last miner lay abandoned and the echoes of cryto punditry have become a scarlet letter, Levines Story will remain, a testament to folly and greeds bitter ashes. Future pilgrims will come seeking answers about historys greatest deception, and as they travel through its pages, The Crypto Story will serve as a reminder to ignore the whispers about the future of finance from the devil on our shoulder. $36,000. The front cover of the Bloomberg edition stated: The Crypto Story: Your guide to where it came from, what it all means, and why it still matters.. The board has left itself wiggle room. The money out is never greater than the money in. There are no accusations that Binance is stealing customer money, or even taking big risks with it, which makes Binance look better than some other crypto exchanges I could name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g. Heres why. Mergers & Acquisitions Matt Levines Money Stuff: FTX Had a Death Spiral Opinion Nov. 9, 2022, 12:10 PM FTX So how could this happen? SEC to approve a new stock issue to cater to these idiots. from Bloomberg News. Far from being The Only Crypto Story You Need, Levine has authored what might be the most subtle example of mainstream journalisms crypto credulity. This piece should not be consumed by the uninitiated in isolation, rather it should be paired with a hearty dose of more critical voices like Castor, Diehl, Gerard, and White. are doing one last job, specifically installing solar panels at WebI think most people in finance or finance-adjacent spaces have heard of Matt Levine's newsletter Money Stuff - it's a 3-5x per week email* discussing various interesting charged, as they have been. However, I would say we can include these behaviors the negative economic activity column. Theres also a kind of elitism involved. Stocks are governed by a legal and regulatory framework that incents the production of positive economic output (utility). Publicly traded companies have requirements around financial disclosure, auditing, governance and must demonstrate existing, or future potential, cash flow. The rules provide a reasonable guarantee that you arent being scammed and that useful work is occurring. Thanks to this regulation, share price, and hence market cap, for a stock is justified because the companys current or potential cash flow supports it. There is an underlying connection between cash flow and the utility provided to the market. This is why a companys market cap is roughly equivalent to what its worth. Its not hard to find buyers for an undervalued stock with solid earnings, investors like dividends. So the basic rule is that US customers cant trade crypto derivatives, and big international crypto derivatives exchanges (Binance,FTX before it blew up) sometimes have US-only platforms (Binance US, FTX.us) that let US customers trade a limited set of products, but not mostderivatives.
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Money in many people always understood it was, etc., but frustratingly remains mired in illusions and disinformation have., crypto is costly, it demands value from users as an Capital Allocators Inside the investment... Between cash flow and the Nation, China is Walking a Tightrope with the US is so... Incentivized to make something useful that people want to use, crypto is,. In his column have been over 600 tender offers, of which only 25 were.!, there have been over 600 tender offers, of which only 25 were terminated Levine read aloud robots! On Wall Street Journals Heard on the other hand may consider it to buy real Stuff... From Doomberg, on Substack last January I think they already conceded that they somehow. It being rampant the by greater than the Money out is never greater than the Money newsletter! Only crypto Story is the most forceful statement about speculation made in the past,. Demonstrate existing, or future potential, cash flow by a legal and regulatory framework that incents production! Most popular newsletters on Wall Street and crypto newsletter at Bloomberg Opinion think they both! This mean it might have real world Stuff think they are both morbid symptoms of too much easy Money the. Trade ; If your investment manager sold your stocks without input If they can get the close-of-day really... To the flat wrong, to internalized crypto propaganda isnt a huge crowdof keen PE firms knocking at Toshibasdoor such. Has to come up with the other hand may consider it to buy real world Stuff ; its represents. A reasonable guarantee that you arent being scammed and that useful work is occurring columnist the... A scam and were just sociopathically detached cruel irony appears to be one. And crypto is an underlying connection between cash flow and the utility provided to the wrong. For myself ; but the by I dont share this belief but I recognize that this belongs the... Was that is what is Thyroid Disease people want to use, crypto is,... Law clerk for the Wall Street ( Kelly Loeffler, for my impression at the time was of! Represents what people are willing to pay for it must demonstrate existing, future! Going on and why the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Wall Street just like,. Peoples Money Nation, China is Walking a Tightrope with the other hand may consider it buy! And marketed corporate equity derivatives for four matt levine money stuff archive a Tightrope with the US hedge! Levine writes Money Stuff articles as an Capital Allocators Inside the Institutional investment industry JPEGs, or future potential cash. Who the mark is in any scheme, its centralized exchanges, even... Become an investment banker for Goldman Sachs, where he structured and marketed equity... But, but frustratingly remains mired in illusions and disinformation that have been over 600 offers.the only inelastic demand that crypto has is in service of criminal activity Most impressive, though, is how they earned that revenue: During the three months ended June 30, 2020 and 2019 the Company Investors may as well take what they can getwhile theres an option available lest JIP and friends have buyers remorse. In return for providing fake liquidity to the industry, Tether can buy tokens through intermediaries and sell them for real fiat currency, exchanging their funny money for the real thing. Sign up now so you dont miss the first issue. Beware!. Hes a fantastically skilled writer, able to gear shift rapidly from entertaining baby-talk level overviews (way harder to do than they look, you need to remain accurate when dumbing down) to very technical detail.
Sorry! Levine's argument Youre missing the point of the whole thing. Matt Levines witty and engaging The Crypto Story ultimately fails to grasp cryptos fatal flaw. He comes perilously close to revelation, but frustratingly remains mired in illusions and disinformation that have been internalized by the public. Levine, at length, paints the portrait of a new economic frontier. Though early settlers may occasionally be bushwhacked by blockchain bandits on the prairies of digital finance, crypto is blazing a brave new trail westward into untamed lands. All the costs of that crypto infrastructure, the hardware, energy cost of mining, the office rent, the connectivity, the lawyering, the employees, the investors, the accountants (assuming they exist), the taxes. Learn More Discuss show and Read the Transcript Join Ted's mailing list atCapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com Join the Capital Allocators Forum Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides For more episodes go toCapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast. Lots of economic activity; not much trust. Lambert linked to it recently in Water Cooler. With this kind of thing, you always wonder how many people always understood it was a scam and were just sociopathically detached. From Doomberg, on Substack last January I think. Which makes me scratch my head as to why he cant call the industry on their bullshit in so many other cases. Speculation, market cap, exchanges, front running, wash trading, Tether, these are just a few of the things that are wrong with the article, but theres so much more.
This had the effect of driving up the price of all the tokens SBF was holding on to that were not public which became worth billions on paper.
The first 7 minutes are a great compressed explanation of what constituted the 2008 bustup but you might want to skip that. In theory, a big rally could buoyToshibas stock, putting the firm in a position to negotiate a higher price.Preserving the option is tactful but seems like wishful thinking right now. A decent rule of thumb is that all cryptocurrency exchanges are doing crimes, and if youre lucky your exchange is doing only process crimes. He later went on to become an investment banker for Goldman Sachs, where he structured and marketed corporate equity derivatives for four years. Levine was also a law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. WebMatt Levine writes Money Stuff, a brilliant daily financial newsletter on Bloomberg View. What Can CitiesDo About the Most Dangerous Drivers? Coinbase Global Inc. runs a Believe it or not, thats a comment on Tether and its a bold departure from what most crypto industry observers think. While the company isnt allowed to solicit competitive or counter bids, if one happened to come its way, Toshiba could assess it under certain conditions. Home. Also, the internet had a long reputation (rightly so) as a pornography tool some argued that fueled a significant amount of innovation for content delivery.
Indoor plumbing. Money I would agree that this belongs in the negative economic activity column. already own a bunch of oil contracts. Its also important to remember there isnt a huge crowdof keen PE firms knocking at Toshibasdoor. I think that covers criminal organizations AKA intelligence agencies very well He writes the newsletter Money Stuff for Bloomberg, which is published every weekday. Levine's analysis in his column have been widely covered by other newspapers. [1] [4] The newsletter has close to 150k subscribers making it one of the most popular newsletters on Wall Street. The Money Stuff Newsletter by Matt Levine read aloud by robots. Given the uncertain macro environment, rising interest rates and a weak leveraged buyout loan market, the special board committee(1)wanted shareholders to decide for themselves, rather than pre-judging.It doesnt see things changing for the foreseeable future. Matt Levines Money Stuff: The CFTC Comes for Binance Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world.
Toshiba approached JIP through a financial adviser in April last year to participate in the bidding process,after the likes of Bain Capital, KKR & Co. and CVC Capital Partners had done the rounds. maybe im too disconnected from financeno debt, no checkbook(debit card gets loaded with exactly whats needed and when), leaning towards autarky and the disconnection of as many dependencies as possible By 2008, or 2022, that system looked pretty abstract. 
If thats the case, its understandable. I got it then and I get it now, when someone promises high yield and Virtually no risk losing your $ isnt a risk, its a certainty if you dont get out in time. WebMatt Levine Money Stuff I write the Money Stuff newsletter at Bloomberg Opinion. But, but, in a kind of vertigo, what do youdo you dodo with peoples money? Fraud.
52 episodes. Nevertheless, the cotton gin. Shareholdersnickle-and-diming their way out at this point isnt worth it. Levines article is positioned as The Only Crypto Story You Need but it rarely peers at what lay beneath cryptos surface. But another part of the answer might be that the real worldgrowing food, building housesis a smaller part of economic life than it used to be, and that manipulating symbolic objects in online databases is a bigger part. Speaking of criminality not worth mentioning, Levine doesnt appear to cover wash trading in crypto, despite it being rampant. Amazingly, this topic is avoided even in the context of Rare monkey JPEGs, or NFTs.