Marc West

I sat down with E. Dean Tribble from Agoric to find out about his project and how they are making transactions easier for their users! #crypto #agoric #agoricsystems

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📈🏢 Aby Rosen's RFR Holding is facing a staggering $2.5B debt bill as defaults pile up! 💥 🔎 According to a recent Bisnow article, RFR Holding, a prominent NYC real estate firm, is grappling with mounting debt and defaults. The company, led by billionaire Aby Rosen, has a portfolio of high-profile properties, including the iconic Seagram Building and Lever House. 🏢🏦 📊 The firm's debt load has surged to a whopping $2.5B, with $1.1B in loans maturing this year alone. 💸 The pandemic has hit the commercial real estate market hard, causing defaults to skyrocket. RFR Holding is no exception, with defaults on several properties, including the $200M mortgage on the Seagram Building. 📉 🗣️ "The pandemic has created a perfect storm for commercial real estate," said one industry expert. "Companies like RFR Holding are facing unprecedented challenges as they navigate this difficult time." 🌪️ 🔜 So, what's next for RFR Holding? The company is reportedly exploring options to refinance its debt and avoid further defaults. 💡 With the commercial real estate market showing signs of recovery, there's hope that RFR Holding can weather this storm. 🌞 Stay tuned for more updates on this developing story! 📰🔔 #RFRHolding #CommercialRealEstate #Debt #Defaults #NYCRealEstate

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Great question by Jason Long on a previous thread ( link in comments below): """ I'd be curious to understand the SECs rationale for making sub-$1B valuation IPOs so difficult. The US public market might be losing its agility by effectively barring small-caps from having a fighting chance. As you mentioned, plenty of great companies IPO'd below the $1B range. """ Here's the 3 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission mandates with roughly # of employees devoted to each. 1. Investor protection -- Think securities police -- 2,500 2. Maintaining efficient markets -- think regulators -- 2,500 3. Capital formation -- think helping businesses raise capital -- 2 Why? The SEC has an impossible task of policing a $100 Trillion stock and bond market with 2,500 cops. So, they focus on the big banner cases that are most likely to get the rest of the market to pay attention and change behavior. Congress isn't going to ask the SEC commissioners to testify as to why small businesses struggle to IPO. But they do ask them to testify when stock markets collapse or we have derivatives crisis like 2008-09. And, so they work very hard to make sure investors don't get screwed, and that we have efficient public markets. But as a result, compliance to be a public company costs between $2-5 million a year. This is why there's half as many public companies as there were 20 years ago. Crowd-funding is a thing, but only a couple hundred companies take advantage of that every year, because if a crowd-funding investor buys stock in a small business, where can they resell the stock and take a profit? There's no stock exchange available to do that. So, small business capital formation is left to the venture capital community. VC's funds are structured so they and their investors can only make money on their fund when they invest in future unicorns.

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Crypto's tales of strange bedfellows continues: now starring SBF and FTX’s investors. If you thought crypto getting in bed with trad-fi was weird, wait till you get a load of this Bloomberg report: "A group of FTX investors and customers has agreed to drop their claims against co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried in exchange for his cooperation against other defendants in a sprawling set of lawsuits over the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse. The agreement, if approved by a judge, would free Bankman-Fried from civil liability only weeks after he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud for stealing billions of dollars from FTX. According to the settlement, filed Friday in federal court in Miami, plaintiffs in the multi-district litigation would resolve all claims against him now and in the future." But wait. There's more. Apparently the whole Scooby gang is in on this: "Other FTX insiders, including the former executives Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh who testified against Bankman-Fried, were also sued by investors, but they too have agreed to settle. They have already begun handing over information to help the plaintiffs’ case, according to the court filing." Which means: "That leaves the high-profile celebrities, sport stars and social media influencers who promoted FTX to investors and customers." But it's not just celebrities in the firing line, though they are the most prominent: "That list of defendants is long after several lawsuits filed in the wake of the FTX meltdown were consolidated into one case in Miami. Financiers and celebrity endorsers, including sports stars Tom Brady and Shaquille O’Neal and model Gisele Bundchen, were accused of promoting the exchange’s unregistered securities and enticing investors into a Ponzi scheme. As part of his agreement, Bankman-Fried will also provide any information he can about venture capital firms that invested in FTX and accountants and lawyers that worked with the exchange." So, VCs and professionals such as accountants and lawyers may also have to face the music of civil litigation. You can't say SBF is acting out of character, throwing anyone and everyone he can under the bus to save himself. Looks like the FTX debacle is nowhere near over.

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And so another enchanted moment for Bitcoin this week. We have bitcoin futures on the CBOE, and perpetual contracts on the exchanges (not available for Americans). Never cared for either to be honest. Trading futures is quite pricey and the volatility of bitcoin makes it a risky trading vehicle. Perpetual contracts tend to be geared more toward having the trader get auto-liquidated on the exchange of their choice. So I've never touched either of these because I simply don't like them for one reason or another 🤷‍♂️ But now traditional option contracts will be available on BlackRock's $IBIT ETF. At the end of the bull market you can buy puts and short bitcoin. When the real bull market begins, you can buy calls and make some side money on the price action. Or buy straddles. Or strangles. Whatever, doesn't matter 😎 And they'll be relatively cheap seeing the price of $IBIT is around $36 or so. Not a bad start to the week thus far.

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