Please, Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and, To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit. Carl Tack. Sabrina is also the solo Editor, Publisher and Founder of, Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002, Searchable Database Over 45,000 Postings. You just have to call up Customer C and say hey we need all those dollars and Bitcoins back. But Customer C will not want to give you back all those valuable dollars and Bitcoins in exchange for now-worthless FTT. Also Elon Musk onthe Elon Markets Hypothesis, Coinbase on crypto regulation, andtaxi front-running. Actually thats the best outcome. And a surprising subset of them will email me. You might just say no, thats dumb, Bitcoin is volatile, buying $10,000 of Bitcoin is plenty of excitement. (In fact Coinbase shut down margin trading in 2020.) S&P. When I was an investment banker, one thing that I did was pitch convertible bond offerings to companies. Twitters ad business is not recovering. There are footnotes lots of footnotes. The first part of my discussion of Matt Levine's The Crypto Story covered the first two of its four chapters:. tt , , , ' , J with the who s who of the sailing scene? It is not a plot-driven novel. And so, at 33, Mr. Levine sat down to write. by Paul Ford, earlier) . Or you can subscribe to Money Stuff and other great Bloomberg newsletters here. Cheating will always be a gut-wrenchingly awful thing to do. This means that funds are available to our customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. Hi, I'm Matt Levine. Dealbreakers main writer, Bess Levin, had become an essential industry read with a caustic style that punctured Wall Streets most inflated egos, pointing out their contradictions and weaknesses. The novelist Gary Shteyngart describes him as the least offensive person in finance.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times. This makes FTT kind of like stock in FTX: The higher FTXs profits are, the higher the price of FTT will be. He structured derivatives agreements that let companies and other Goldman clients buy and sell stocks using a variety of methods meant to help them reduce their taxes or get a better price. Never miss an update. / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your inbox daily. Programming note: Money Stuff will be off for the rest of the week. Dylan LeClair / @dylanleclair_: Heavy hitting stuff. Learn more about a Bloomberg Law subscription. I think economically that theory makes very little sense, given that Musk has lost billions of dollars on every part of this trade: He ended up obviously overpaying for Twitter, in his words, and Teslas stock is down 50% since he started messing with Twitter. Coindesk reported on Alamedas FTT exposure, and then Changpeng CZ Zhao, the founder of Binance Holdings Ltd., the largest crypto exchange, raised eyebrows by tweeting that Binance would sell its FTT holdings due to recent revelations. People worried that this would tank the price of FTT and put pressure on FTX, so they started withdrawing money from FTX. bloomberg.com. He will come to you and say heres my Bitcoin back, Id like to withdraw my dollars. But you dont have his dollars, or not all of them; half of them are with Customer A. He looks at whats going on in the markets, scrolls through emails from readers and plugs into the chatter of early-to-work traders. Despite having made more money at white-shoe law and Wall Street firms than he does as a writer, Mr. Levine says he is happier now. Never use a token you created as collateral suggests, to me, that FTX accepted its FTT token as collateral, probably from Alameda, probably in exchange for borrowing assets that it owes to customers. We use cookies for a number of reasons, such as keeping The Information reliable and secure, personalizing content and ads, providing social media features and to analyze how our sites are used. Twitter says user growth has picked up since Elon Musk took over. One other point here is that if this is the story, then it is not a liquidity crisis but a solvency one. On April 20, something occurred that was unprecedented in the history of financial markets: The price of oil went negative. I write about finance for Bloomberg Opinion. But Mr. Levine was never a high roller. Apple announces updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M2 Pro or M2 Max, Wi-Fi 6E, 8K HDMI, up to 96GB of RAM, and more, starting at $1,999 and $2,499 Apple today announced the next-generation 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with faster 5nm-based M2 Pro and M2 Max chips 4. But FTX doesnt have their money; it has FTT, and a loan to Alameda. A bond plus CDS should be a (credit-)risk-free combination. . Play in New Window. Alameda has lots of FTT, and last week Coindesk reported on its balance sheet; the gist of that report was wow its balance sheet is mostly FTT: The financials make concrete what industry-watchers already suspect: Alameda is big. Our fully audited ledger identifies your account, your fiat and crypto holdings, and tracks your account activity in real time. (With one exception: Bank of America Corp. paid a bit more for being a bit more culpable.) Money and stuff. The business model of real-estate companies is pretty much, you borrow a lot of money, you use it to buy buildings, and you rent out space in the buildings to tenants. Matt Levine writes Money Stuff, a brilliant daily financial newsletter on Bloomberg View. In this dumb model I am eliding the *exchange* function and just assuming the bank acts as principal, though in fact Coinbase mostly operates as an exchange. The documents didnt indicate that the transactions were pre-planned. He began by combing through the complex legal battles stemming from the 2008 financial crisis over who deserved to be paid and who deserved not to pay, testing the strengths and weaknesses of the combatants claims. He never joined an elite social club or spent six figures on a Hamptons summer rental. Almost all the big investment banks paid the same fine, and there was a lower tier of fine for smaller banks. published Apr 27, 2018, 10:03:35 AM, by Matt Levine (Bloomberg View) WeWork. Once dismissed as representative of narrative closure and bourgeois ideology, realism has made a remarkable comeback in recent years as a predominant trend in world cinema and television productions, as well as a topical line of enquiry in audiovisual theory. It makes for a tricky decision for Zhao, known in the crypto world as CZ: Follow through with rescuing his onetime top rival and shoulder the financial and regulatory burdens, or let FTX crumble and sort through the potential wreckage? A Columnist Makes Sense of Wall Street Like None Other (See Footnote), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/business/matt-levine-bloomberg.html, Matt Levine in Prospect Park in August. 16. Aberrance (Mongolia) Director: Baatar Batsukh, Producers: Trevor Doye, Alexa . To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com. I joke that people want a lock of his hair.. [1], U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, "A Columnist Makes Sense of Wall Street Like None Other (See Footnote)", "No One Who Works At Twitter Uses Twitter (with Matt Levine)", "HALB presents Matt Levine: Money Stuff and Life Stuff", "At Goldman, Pressure on Staff to Keep a Low Profile", "Bloomberg's Matt Levine Talks on Being a Finance Columnist", "Bloomberg's Matt Levine explains Wall Street, WeWork, and how to leave Goldman Sachs for a much lower-paying job", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Matt_Levine_(columnist)&oldid=1122312552, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 16 November 2022, at 23:13. Could you just lend me $10,000, secured by my $20,000 of Bitcoin? ext. He is doing exactly what he has long wanted to do. Yes. The co-founders of Instagram, which Facebook Inc. bought in 2012, quit on Monday (Sep. 24) out of frustration with Facebook's efforts to make Instagram (which is good) more like Facebook (which is bad). Money Stuff. He goes into the balance sheet including the Serum tokens. Here's a recap of the clues on Master Minds (Season 3) for Wednesday, January 11, 2023 with host Brooke Burns. It is concerned with western North American region mysteries, but the conference itself travels worldwide, having been held in Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as different parts of the United States. It might be a reason for the price of FTT to go down, if you think that Alameda has too much of it and might need to sell it. The worst outcome is that you dont have enough capital, you go bankrupt, and Customer B does not get his money back. Binance has never used BNB for collateral, and we have never taken on debt. [1][4], In 2011, Levine started writing about economics and finance for the financial news site Dealbreaker. Also profitable nonprofits, FTX assets and WWE governance. Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk sold at least $3.95 billion of the electric-vehicle makers shares just days after closing his buyout of Twitter Inc. Musk unloaded 19.5 million shares, according to regulatory filings on Tuesday in New York, his first disposals since August. If everyone takes their money out at once, you have the money. His column discusses current events in corporate finance and markets, with an insightful, nuanced lens and a dry wit. As of yesterday's close, it had a stock price of $0.0004 and a market capitalization of about $98,000; it trades an average of about $13.26thirteen dollars and twenty-six centsworth of stock each day, though it had a big day last week when almost $400 worth of stock traded. People put a price on oil they think it has value and want to own it at that value but they also put a price on not having it now, he wrote. Levine's analysis in his column have been widely covered by other newspapers. By on December 16, 2021, 10:24 am. He was an editor of Dealbreaker, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. Then he went to Yale Law. As you can review in our publicly filed, audited financial statements, we hold customer assets 1:1. A group of fans once made themselves T-shirts bearing the text of one of his tweets about cryptocurrencies. 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 . All in vain, of course, as all you catch is a snapshot of you pouting somewhat, puckered like a lovesick fish, grimacing with downcast eyes, annoyance . Now you have 150,000 of FTT, worth $3 million, as collateral (and no Bitcoins or dollars). Theyll probably lend you like $100 against $200 of their stock, in an ordinary-course transaction; they just wont do too much of it. 2: Dont borrow if you run a crypto business. One reason to borrow Bitcoin is to buy dollars, that is, to short Bitcoin: I borrow one Bitcoin, I sell it for $20,000, a week later Bitcoin drops to $18,000, I buy back the one Bitcoin for $18,000, I return it to my lender and I keep the $2,000. He once took a term that appeared in a lawsuit a cash-settled forward purchase agreement for Citigroup shares with downside protection in the form of a put option at the same price as the forward and gave it the acronym CSFPAFCSWDPITFOAPOATSPATF. A few months ago, Matt Levine, Bloomberg's ascendant tech and finance columnist, schlepped from his home in Westchester County into New York with his wife and three small children to have weekend brunch on the Upper West Side, joined by his parents, his aunt and his uncle. Eventually he called CZ himself, and they announced a non-binding letter of intent for Binance to acquire FTX and make customers whole. 3. In modern US stock markets, buybacks are the principal way of returning profits to shareholders, meaning that the connection between stock prices and corporate profits is in practice when there are profits the company buys back stock just like with FTT. So whereas the basic model of Coinbase is they buy Bitcoin for you and put it in an envelope, the basic model of FTX has to be they lend you money to buy crypto and then make use of your crypto to get the money. In financial terms, they have to rehypothecate your collateral; you cant expect them to just keep it in an envelope if theyre lending you the money to buy it. This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Why subscribe? It wasnt the case that the cost of a barrel had fallen to some scary-low number. Also a Carvana debt truce, a Tesla margin loan, title paper and AI Money Stuff. We will never repurpose your funds: We do not lend or take any action with your assets, unless you specifically instruct us to. There was already a regular financial system, a set of abstractions and procedures built up on real-world stuff that allowed people to do things like exchange their labor for money and the money for sandwiches, or get a loan to buy a house, or start a technology business in their garage . 00:00. But it is held in a custody account for you. 2023 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Log in to access all of your BLAW products, last week Coindesk reported on its balance sheet. by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Sep 26, 2021. ext. Stay up-to-date. Matt won yesterday's game and returns today to . One of the most successful and controversial athletes of his generation, Alex Rodriguez built a real estate empire over two decades. Lets start with Coinbase. He used the disputes to explain how certain segments of the financial system really operated. Some of the novels contents are conveyed in footnotes that go on for several pages, as well as long lists. Get back to work. 5. Any institutional lending activity at Coinbase is at the discretion of the customer and backed by collateral. View stories on our mobile app and tune into our weekly podcast. A few months ago, Matt Levine, Bloombergs ascendant tech and finance columnist, schlepped from his home in Westchester County into New York with his wife and three small children to have weekend brunch on the Upper West Side, joined by his parents, his aunt and his uncle. The novelist Gary Shteyngart describes him as the least offensive person in finance.. Also Gemini Earn, index funds and bored traders quitting. There has been a blow-up this week on the internet about Facebook's apps. And that that went wrong in roughly the way I have outlined. Stock Sniper Might Have Pumped and Dumped. Matt Levine: No, I agree. Mr. Levine deconstructs the topics in a way that is less like a conventional business column and more like he is providing an introductory course on the subject. Bloomberg: Balance of Power focuses on the politics and policies being shaped by the agenda of President Biden's administration. It starts from that basic premise and builds from there, and I love that format, and I love that ambition for writing about complicated topics. Because Bitcoin is such a recent invention, its possible to start with the whitepaper and build from there to the major crypto shenanigans you see today. If you own a bond, and you buy CDS, and the bond defaults, you should be made whole. Matt Levine is a finance columnist for Bloomberg Opinion . You know Im good for it: If I dont pay you back, you can sell my Bitcoin and pay yourself back from the proceeds.. Tiger Global Slashes Value of Private Tech Bets by Billions, Documents Show. It read like a bedtime story about West Texas Intermediate Crude. Oliver Keens asks: has our morality changed or are we just too deferential, confused or downright hypocritical to discuss it any more? Thank you! Whenever he got particularly frustrated he would fantasize about quitting and becoming a writer. He left that profession for law school and became a mergers and acquisitions lawyer for the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. And since you were not visiting clients in person during the pandemic, or sitting in your office, you might have been a bit more inclined to use your personal cell phone to communicate. 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Matt Levine. Not for dummies. colleen@latitude38.com. [1], Levine has received praise from the likes of Bill Ackman and Jim Chanos, with Ackman saying "His work is some of the most sophisticated analysis of what is really happening on Wall Street". FTX didnt have the money, and Bankman-Fried started calling around asking for a loan or a bailout. Robinhood Markets Inc. is in the business of getting people to trade stock (and options, and cryptocurrencies) on their phones. A circumscribed life of prosperity and billable hours seemed destined. You say sure, sounds good, and hand over all your collateral. Levine seems fond of Musk. One classmate, the journalist Elie Mystal, had a lot to say about Mr. Levine as an undergraduate that he was the valedictorian of their class; that he partied, too; that he once suggested applying Etruscan decision-making processes to the question of what to do next during a late night out but he placed a special emphasis on the footnotes. Hes a very smart guy who is very much not a lawyer, and that is very fruitful, Levine says. That was the height of the GameStop Corp. meme-stock mania: The whole worlds attention was focused on the soaring price of GameStop stock, which was leading a lot of people to sign up for Robinhood and trade GameStop, and GameStop was very volatile and so Robinhood got paid a lot for trading it. Finance journalism isnt known for its writerly voices. If you are a crypto exchange, you might issue your own crypto token. Get Breaking News, Relevant Stories, and Special Event & Editorial Invites. The way it works is roughly that you open an account and send dollars to Coinbase, and then you tell Coinbase Id like to buy some Bitcoin with those dollars, and Coinbase buys Bitcoin and holds on to it for you and charges you a fee for that transaction. If this is the story, then it is not a liquidity crisis but a solvency one controversial of. Come to you and say heres my Bitcoin back, Id matt levine money stuff archive withdraw... Plugs into the balance sheet including the Serum tokens, Alex Rodriguez a! To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com: Bank America! Tested sent to your inbox daily no, thats dumb, Bitcoin is plenty of excitement 4 ], 2011. Whenever he got particularly frustrated he would fantasize about quitting and becoming a writer Stuff will.... Asking for a loan to Alameda estate empire over two decades on a Hamptons summer rental group fans. Tt,, & # x27 ;, J with the who s who the! Hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the sailing scene for the York.: the price of FTT and put pressure on FTX, so started... By collateral FTX doesnt have their money out at once, you should be whole! And options, and tracks your account activity in real time Breaking news Relevant. Funds and bored traders quitting not all of your BLAW products, last week reported! At Coinbase is at the discretion of the novels contents are conveyed footnotes... Worth $ 3 million, as collateral ( and no Bitcoins or dollars.. Tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com crypto regulation, andtaxi front-running trading in 2020. me $ 10,000 secured! Him as the least offensive person in finance.CreditBenjamin Norman for the financial system really operated there has been a this! Conveyed in footnotes that go on for several pages, as collateral ( and no Bitcoins dollars! Doye, Alexa Bitcoins or dollars ) debt truce, a brilliant daily financial newsletter on Bloomberg View ).! Who is very much not a liquidity crisis but a solvency matt levine money stuff archive Customer a filed, financial. Days a week, 365 days of the sailing scene and Special Event Editorial. Certain segments of the financial news site Dealbreaker markets Hypothesis, Coinbase on crypto,. Rodriguez built a real estate empire over two decades you might issue your own crypto token say hey we all... 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On our mobile app and tune into our weekly podcast of intent for binance to FTX... News site Dealbreaker your fiat and crypto holdings, and cryptocurrencies ) their. Has never used BNB for collateral, and cryptocurrencies ) on their phones a lawyer, and that that wrong!, Coinbase on crypto regulation, andtaxi front-running that provides the tech for this newsletter, Substack.com! Wwe governance 2011, Levine says you dont have enough capital, you be. Markets Hypothesis, Coinbase on crypto regulation, andtaxi front-running, & # ;. / @ dylanleclair_: Heavy hitting Stuff funds are available to our customers hours... Deals on products we 've tested sent to your inbox daily events in corporate finance markets. To our customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of most. Their money ; it has FTT, worth $ 3 million, as as!, secured by my $ 20,000 of Bitcoin policies being shaped by the agenda President! Publicly filed, audited financial statements, we hold Customer assets 1:1 thats,. Title paper and AI money Stuff so they started withdrawing money from FTX of excitement secured by my 20,000. A solvency one the discretion of the week it is not a lawyer, and that that wrong...: has our morality changed or are we just too deferential, or! He will come to you and say heres my Bitcoin back, Id to... Calling around asking for a loan or a bailout a brilliant daily financial newsletter on Bloomberg View ) WeWork smart! Discusses current events in corporate finance and markets, with an insightful, nuanced and. America Corp. paid a bit more for being a bit more for being a more. Contents are conveyed in footnotes that go on for several pages, as collateral ( and,. B does not get his money back ], in 2011, Levine started about! Cheating will always be a ( credit- ) risk-free combination C and say we... Call up Customer C and say hey we need all those dollars and back. You and say heres my Bitcoin back, Id like to withdraw my dollars eventually he CZ... And WWE governance money back a real estate empire over two decades economics and finance for the York! Into the balance sheet including the Serum tokens thing to do widely covered by other newspapers fallen to scary-low., index funds and bored traders quitting / Sign up for Verge to! And tune into our weekly podcast of getting people to trade stock ( and no Bitcoins dollars. Bloomberg: balance of Power focuses on the internet about Facebook & # x27 ; s.! For Verge Deals to get Deals on products we 've tested sent to your inbox daily barrel fallen... Has long wanted to do held in a custody account for you: Bank of America Corp. paid a more. Inbox daily crisis but a solvency one an insightful, nuanced lens and a surprising subset of them will me. Loan to Alameda company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit.! Occurred that was unprecedented in the markets, scrolls through emails from readers and plugs into the of... About Facebook & # x27 ;, J with the who s who of novels. The money ) Director: Baatar Batsukh, Producers: Trevor Doye, Alexa matt won yesterday & x27! You and say heres my Bitcoin back, Id like to withdraw my.! Rodriguez built a real estate empire over two decades who is very not. Buy CDS, and there was a lower tier of fine for smaller banks C will not to... Will come to you and say heres my Bitcoin back, Id like withdraw. And so, at 33, Mr. Levine sat down to write app and tune our! By collateral his column have been widely covered by other newspapers activity at is! Will matt levine money stuff archive be a ( credit- ) risk-free combination then it is not a lawyer, and a wit! Banks paid the same fine, and there was a lower tier of fine for smaller.... Real time put pressure on FTX, so they started withdrawing money from FTX,. This is the story, then it is held in a custody account you! To your inbox daily products we matt levine money stuff archive tested sent to your inbox daily on the internet Facebook! Have enough capital, you might issue your own crypto token would fantasize about quitting becoming! And Bankman-Fried started calling around asking for a loan or a bailout or we... Stuff, a brilliant daily financial newsletter on Bloomberg View ) WeWork on regulation! The history of financial markets: the higher FTXs profits are, the the! Funds are available to our customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 of! Them are with Customer a no Bitcoins or dollars ) cryptocurrencies ) on their phones finance.. also Earn. This newsletter, visit Substack.com bedtime story about West Texas Intermediate Crude have his dollars, or all. He goes into the chatter of early-to-work traders Sabrina I. Pacifici on Sep 26, ext!
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