“Bitcoin got fried”, a title in today’s FT, would have gone over my head 24 hrs ago
I’d never heard of Sam Bankman-Fried & might have guessed “FTX” was a sports car brand extension
My 2022 surprise list a year ago (see comments) was for Bitcoin to fall 50% to $25000 so the collapse doesn’t surprise me
What DOES surprise me, is the spreadsheets of once reputable investors – SoftBank, Sequoia, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, & Tiger Global thought 300 employees in the Bahamas was worth $32bn, only 10 months ago
But they’re “disruptors”
Yes, “disrupting” those poor teachers’ retirement plans..
Even the editor of, The Block, thought it was impressive – tweeting “FTX…nabs $32bn valuation, worth more than Credit Suisse, Deutchebank and Nasdaq”
“Nab” – “verb / informal / take, grab or steal”
FTX proudly tweeted: “They may have 47,000 employees, but we have 1 Gary”
Who’s Gary? I wondered. Maybe “About Us” would tell me
An “All-Star team” – “built by traders for traders”
Not built for investors, that’s for sure,
other than short sellers
And seemingly more of a Supernova
But while in space, in what galaxy did these spreadsheets kick out a $32bn valuation?
even with “Gary”
Who was too busy staring at monitors for any photo shots but studied at MIT & worked at Google aggregating flight prices – he should definitely cancel any flights to the US until they find that $8bn..
Those “investors”, can’t have used a DCF model – there was none!
Clue? They’d raised money only 4 months earlier!
And who answered the Finance questions during their fundraisings because their “All-Star” team doesn’t list a CFO
Give me a charismatic CEO & a weak/absent CFO, and I’ll show you a short-selling candidate because there’s only one person driving the journal entries, and it’s not the CFO
Not that I find Sam very charismatic, but what do I know?
other than he’s the “Son of two Stanford Professors”?
How does anyone know that & who cares what your parents did for a living? The things some people focus on…
It can’t be COO, Constance, because her LinkedIn profile reads, “primarily responsible for global user growth, PR & marketing, institutional clients servicing and operational procedure” (sp)
well, that “procedure” clearly wasn’t focused on liquidity!
Perhaps there was no CFO because my search revealed you can get a Digital Asset Business license in Antigua within 3-4 months for $100k of capital. And you don’t even need an audit…
Ah ha!
The “millennial portfolio” of 50% Tesla and 50% bitcoin is down 57% this year
But I fear there’s lots more pain ahead for tech as this BTC & VC fallout plays out
Ranmore has created wealth by buying decent businesses at decent valuations with sensible management who are on our side. Our margin of safety requirement means we focus on the downside – very important these days!
You can suffer from FOMO & try catch the (All) stars
But remember..
some stars explode