Most of us have had some really tough days in the market, but nothing like this…..
“Crypto Billionaire Bankman-Fried Loses Entire Fortune in One Day”
https://apple.news/ASdPj-m6kTb2jLwSA5PbBpg
ARMs have gotten better but depends on the spread. They used to be crazy and people bought way more than they couldn't afford based on a temporarily low rate. Having said that, you can always refinance.
I did a no cost refinance near end of 2020 at 2.5% fixed for 25 years. Could have done 15 years, but I figure worth extending as long as possible at that low of a rate. Feeling pretty good about it now. I was at 3.625% from a 2015 purchase which isn't horrible either.
So, yeah, prices have gone down slightly perhaps in the last several months but that only applies to cash buyers. For borrowers, monthly costs have gone up considerably. And because nobody wants to lose their low rate, there are fewer people willing to sell their home unless it's paid off for and they're downsizing. So that puts a constraint on supply. Still I expect prices to continue downward trend. Housing prices tend to be "stickier" than most and don't correct at the same pace as other asset classes typically.
Most of us have had some really tough days in the market, but nothing like this…..
“Crypto Billionaire Bankman-Fried Loses Entire Fortune in One Day”
https://apple.news/ASdPj-m6kTb2jLwSA5PbBpg
The full story of this is just wild. It's more of a mafia style shake down than bad business practices. Well I guess the bad business practice was Bankman-Fried getting in bed with Changpeng Zhao in the first place. Binance then just took a baseball bat to FTX's kneecaps. Bankman-Fried is extremely bright but probably naive compared to Zhao who is ruthless.
I read it as he still has $992 million worth of assets (his stake is $618M, but that only accounts for 62.4% of his total net worth), but I think it's largely guesswork:
"This stake is now valued at $618 million, which represents 62.4% of Bankman-Fried's current net wealth."
So, he's just shy of billionaire status still...Not shabby. Although "losing" (on paper) $17B in a day certainly isn't fun I imagine regardless of wealth afterward.
Not sure he ever REALLY had the $17 billion in hand. Frankly, it's almost all "funny money" (although I'm no expert on crypto-currencies, if anyone really is?) . I know the news media likes to play up these sorts of stories, with absurd numbers and valuations. It reminds me a little of the 2016 presidential campaign when DT told people he had a net worth of $10 billion when both Forbes Magazine and Bloomberg estimated his net worth somewhere in the range of $1.3 billion.
A billion dollars isn't much any more...I mean they are trying to hand out nearly a billion cash in a game.(Powerball)
So, with that said, how about a trillion?
Amazon Becomes World’s First Public Company to Lose $1 Trillion in Market Value
- Amazon market cap shrinks to $879 billion from $1.88 trillion
- Microsoft is close behind with $889 billion in value lost
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...lost#xj4y7vzkg
Pretty amazing that Apple's market cap is more than Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet COMBINED.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-...lar-club-1.jpg
Meta, Tesla and Amazon all have valuations less than $1T now. Alphabet/Google is now at $1.1T.
Aramco is the only non-US/non Tech company that has made the $1T club. I'm sure most people in this country have never heard of it...
To be clear, these exchanges that are causing all the issues have never been decentralized.
The “crypto” exchanges absolutely need to be regulated, like banks are. We can’t trust people to do the right thing when it comes to money, unfortunately. There needs to be transparency and accountability to protect those who use them. Regulators need to act, sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, don’t leave your assets on an exchange, it’s that simple.
Self custody. It’s easy.
What sucks about all this FTX fraud is that it scares people about “crypto” and sets back legitimate projects and Bitcoin adoption.
Wouldn’t it would be nice if the Mods would reopen the “crypto “ thread where we could have a civil and informative conversation on this topic?
Well, this is enjoyable so far.
Meta and Google dropping does not, they are basically online advertising platforms wrapped up products given to the public for free.
Tesla, is seeing increased competition and their CEO is selling because he can't keep his mouth shut. If they had self-driving nailed at this point, I'd be more bullish on their prospects, but Musk seems to perpetually promise it never is.
Amazon dropping so far surprises me. They actually do something in the physical world, and do it very well. There is a reason not many have been able to compete with Walmart, FedEx, UPS...and Amazon does all three.
Some potential positive news coming out that FTX.US exchange, which is regulated, that US users funds are safe. We’ll see.
Evidently, it’s FTX International exchange, (separate entity from FTX.US), is the one that is facing collapse.
Going to be a lot of contagion losses in the VC world as all this unwinds.
Beyond those three things that they do well, their most profitable department is AWS (Amazon Web Services). They compete with Microsoft, IBM/Oracle, VMWare, et al in the space. Alphabet does have Google Cloud Platform too (competing with AWS) so they don't only offer "online advertising platforms wrapped up products given to the public for free" but I agree that's the vast majority of their business certainly.
I haven't looked close enough at AWS vs. Azure revenues and where Microsoft is really killing it to warrant their huge market cap premium over Amazon. Certainly, Amazon's revenues are significantly larger, but margins on the bulk of their business (selling/shipping goods) is much lower than the tech offerings of Microsoft/AWS.
Business Week had a good piece on self driving cars a few issues ago. Bottom line is they still can't figure it out, despite the optimistic bleatings. Even in snow and rain free climates they struggle with left turns and roadway obstacles. The giddy enthusiasm among carmakers is pretty much gone.
Surprised not to see more about the FTX blow-up. It's hard to get straight information but it is looking like this could be a real Lehman moment for the digital asset industry. Billions of dollars vanishing overnight and some of the lack of controls within FTX are shocking to see. Sequoia wrote its $210mm investment down to zero (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/10/sequ...ment-to-0.html) and Ontario Teachers has hundreds of millions of dollars invested. This has the potential to be the securities plaintiffs bar employment act of 2023. It will also be interesting to see some of the sunlight (if any) that is shone on members of congress that were quite cozy with SBF and accepting massive amounts of money while FTX was actively lobbying for legislation.
My Quick Smells Like French Toast.
I too wish to see the Bitcoin thread reopened, as there's a lot to to discuss recently with the FTX implosion and other news and I don't always check this thread.
In the meantime, I HIGHLY recommend the previously linked Bloomberg article, which I will post again.
It's very lengthy, and took me several sittings to get all the way through, but well worth the time and effort, regardless of where you fall on the crypto-enthusiast curve.
He really hits on almost every the aspects of the whole space, and pretty fairly. It seems every discussion point and sub-thread on this board was touched upon at some stage of the article.
Some of it I already knew well (the cryptography, some of the technology), and some was either new or at least clarifying on topics that aren't my background (finance and markets).
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2...-crypto-story/
I pulled out numerous snippets worth highlighting, but I'm wary of posting them here and would prefer to put them in the other, unlocked thread.
I understand the PPB concern, and I was thinking of a single question that describes the tendency to gravitate toward that space:
"To what extent can and should digital technologies sidestep the role and impact of government in and on your life?"
If we can set that to the side, I think there's still a lot to be discussed without clogging up the Investment thread.
A text without a context is a pretext.