If you're out of the loop - this is the (hilarious) story of a subreddit (wall street bets) taking down a multi-billion dollar hedge fund... get your popcorn ready 🍿
Here's the 30 second summary of the FTX drama that is blowing up in crypto.
1/ How FTX (a multi billion dollar co) almost died overnight
2/ And why this is a god tier strategic move by
@cz_binance
to be clear. This has nothing to do with gamestop as a business. They are just a piece of rope being used in a tug of war between internet nerds and wall st suits.
the rally cry on r/wallstreet bets:
"we can remain retarded for longer than they can stay solvent!"
This year I learned that there is no"smart money"
A16z, Sequioa, Chamath, Tiger, Tribe Capital, Coatue, Softbank, Paradigm, Ark, 3AC, Alameda, FTX, etc..
all made terrible financial decisions, at huge size.
and yet - most will get richer.
Wow. Someone asked Elon Musk: "what encouraging words do you have for people who want to do a startup?"
His answer: If you need words of encouragement, don't do a startup.
🎤
Creative ppl should NOT work Monday-Friday 9-to-5 (yet 99% do this)
@naval
has a great framework. Work like a LION.
- sit
- wait for prey
- SPRINT
- eat/enjoy
- rest & repeat
Most people work like COWS instead. Standing in the field all day, grazing grass slowly.
Melvin had a $55M+ short against GME.. If you're not familiar with shorting - read this simple explanation using apes and snakes and bananas from the subreddit.
Teachers, take note:
If you invested $1k ten years ago:
Google: $6k
Facebook: $9k
Amazon: $22k
Netflix: $34k
Tesla: $159k
Bitcoin: $237M
Which one would you invest $1k in to hold for the next 10 years?
Part III - What it is
The metaverse is the moment in time where our digital life is worth more to us than our phsyical life.
This is not an overnight change. Or an invention by some steve jobs type.
It's a gradual change that's been happening for 20 yrs
Melvin lost $2B+ in like 2 weeks, and just had to get bailed out by 2 other funds just to cover it's losses from the shorts.
It's not quite George Soros "Breaking the Bank of England" - but it's close.
The yolo traders of reddit just broke a multi-billion dollar hedge fund
10 years ago, Netflix spent $0 on original content.
This year:
Netflix: $11B
Apple: $6B
Disney: $1B
+ amazon, hulu HBO etc.
=
$20B+
Here's a crazy startup idea to take a swing at this $20B+ content piñata. 👇 Here's a quick business plan 🤔
Whitney Wolfe -
* the hustler behind Tinder's early growth
* got harassed, stripped of her cofounder title, left the co
* created Bumble, a rival version of Tinder for women
* took it public
* became a billionaire at 31
* celebrated the IPO while holding her kid
winning!!
If you wanna level up - the fastest hack is to hangout with people who are ALREADY at that level.
The beauty of twitter is that you can hang with anyone.
The problem is ppl follow the wrong accounts. It's noisy as f*ck.
Here's 27 people you should follow (and why)👇
CZ clears it up
"FTX was in trouble. We bought them to save them"
Binance basically started a rumor, made a threat, and ended up buying its biggest competitor overnight.
magnus carlsen approves
It keeps going. Logan Paul. Beeple.
Gary V sees that you've created a new place to yell, and immediately starts a room telling 24 year olds if they really want to make money, just move back in with their parents & sell their parents furniture on craigslist.
My friends buy cashflowing businesses from retiring boomer owners.
In 2.5 years: $80M+ in revenue, $15m+ in ebitda from steady, boring businesses that have been around for decades
One of my best investments ever
Big upside, without the risk profile of typical startups
bitcoin is something straight out of a movie. I marvel at it.
- mysterious founder
- who never touched a penny of a $50B+ fortune
- finds a breakthru in computer science to give us money without needing to trust banks & governments
- right after the bank bailout
The ancient struggle was not having enough.
The modern struggle is having too much.
Too much news, too much sugar, too much of everything at your fingertips..There's only 1 way out.
7 predictions for 2023:
1) elon gets cancelled / one of his co's declines 90%+ in value from ATH
2) sp500 down 30% by july
3) ETH touches $600, Bitcoin $11k
4) Bucks win the championship
5) facebook ads return to form post iOS14
6) OpenAI valued > $75B
7) TikTok banned in US
I used to think "billionaires going to space" was some kinda thing-swinging-contest.
But check this out.
Back in 2000, he says "if I could do anything, I'd want to explore space....maybe in 20 years the tech would be ready"
21 years later. He got went to space today!
The best startups do what your parents told you NOT to do:
* Don't get into a stranger's car -->
@Uber
* Don't sleep in a stranger's house -->
@Airbnb
* Don't talk to strangers -->
@Tinder
* Don't play video games all day -->
@Twitch
* Don't be lazy -->
@Doordash
Every important part of life is going digital.
Work --> from factories to laptops. boardrooms to zooms.
Friends --> from neighbors to followers. Where do you find like minded people? Twitter. Reddit. etc.
Games --> more kids play fortnite than basketball & football combined.
Real Estate has the highest % of "dumb rich people".
I'm not saying you're dumb if you're in real estate.
I'm saying -- if you want to get rich without needing to be a genius, real estate is your best bet.
the hero of our story: a user named DeepFuckingValue bought $50k of call options in Gamestop ($GME) that has turned into a $13M+ win in ~3 months.
he's a part of the subreddit r/WallStreetBets, a group of degenerate gamblers that I love.
Hard work is massively overrated.
*WHAT* you work on is far more important than *HOW HARD* you work.
I'm pretty lazy. But I'm happy and successful.
Janitors work hard. Backline cooks work hard. Hard work helps you win your game. Choose the right game.
Everything goes digital. Your friends, your job, your identity.
And now with crypto, your assets are online too.
Bored Apes are the new Rolex.
Fortnite skins are the new skinny jeans.
If everyone hangs out online all the time, then your flexes need to be digital.
the next zuckerberg is up all night, coding up an AI girlfriend/boyfriend.
Steve Jobs fixed boredom (phone)
Zuck fixed people watching (FB/IG)
Speigel fixed flirting (Snap)
The next one will fix loneliness.
people will mock it, use it, then be addicted to it.
So if you play this forward another 10-20 years - we will cross into the metaverse
The moment in time where digital matters more to us than physical.
Our attention used to be 99% on our phsysical environment.
TVs dropped that to 85%
Computers down to 70%
Phones.. 50%
I just sold my 2nd company! (
@MilkRoadDaily
)
super happy.
- grew from zero to 250,000 readers in less than 1 year
- self funded & profitable even w/ crypto crash
- biggest daily crypto newsletter
here's how it happened..
Behind the scenes with Peter Levels (the guy who makes $2.7M/year, with 1 employee and 0 f*cks given)
1. He's hilarious
2. He makes ~$3M/yr with 90% profit
3. Owns almost nothing (1 bag)
4. Has 1 employee
Here's how he does it
short squeezes (and day trading) are stressful and super volatile.
But... I'm here for the petty fight between internet trolls and wall st.
And in that fight, i'm going with the neckbeard cat guy rather than goldman sachs suit. $50k on $GME and $BB at market open baby 😅😅😅
Soon, some company will make smart glasses that sit in front of our eyes all day.
We will go from 50% attention on screens to ~90%+
That's the moment in time when the metaverse starts.
Because at that moment, our virtual life will become more important than our real life.
this thread went viral, but I forgot to add two things:
1) Nobody will call it the "metaverse" in a few years. That's like in 1997 people used to call the internet the "information superhighway" and "cyberspace"
2) except pooping. we'll all still poop in the real world
I have a new hero and her name is Sarah Moore.
• Under 30 years old
• Had no money, no experience. Biggest asset was her car (a RAV4)
• Spent 1 year hunting through 100,000+ businesses to find ONE to buy
• Bought a $20M+ business called “”, all debt
So I thought the whole "paid newsletter" thing was dumb.
So naturally, I tried it out as an experiment.. The results were kinda nutty. The newsletter started bringing home $49k per month (!) -- Here's the backstory
"Most people" do what "Most people" do.
This is a huge mistake. In the US:
* 50% of marriages end in divorce or separation
* 60%+ of the pop. is obese or overweight
* 70% of people have less than $1k in savings
What "most people" are doing isn't working
Becoming a Billionaire is a silly goal.
they just give the money away anyways.
Instead..be a:
- Help Billionaire, helping 1B people. OR
- Time Billionaire - having complete freedom of schedule, to invest billions of minutes into projects you care about.
I didn't plan to share this, but f*ck it, why not.
I've met Tony Robbins twice now.
I'm sharing some of the biggest takeaways here on a google doc (public access). You can see my cursor writing now.
99% of people will never go to his events. too busy, too expensive, or just
Dear anyone who wants to be a "creator" or "build an audience" in 2024. There's something you should know...
Here are a few of the non-obvious lessons I've learned building a 500k+ followers & 100M+ downloads:
#1
- WHO follows you is far more important than HOW MANY people
our attention has been sucked from physical to digital.
And where attention goes, energy flows.
If 50% of our attention is on our digital screen, then 50% of our energy will go to our digital life.
Today it takes some effort to take our phone out of pocket and look at it.
Identity --> filters are the new makeup. Stories are your personal billboard to broadcast who you are.
What matters more. What you look like in real life? or what you look like on instagram?
The pic on the left is what they see, so it's what matters.
except in this case - redditors saw the overloaded short position and started buying the stock, as a "short squeeze" against melvin. Now the "borrowed" shares were due, but redditors refused to sell, demanding higher and higher prices.
Content creators are happy. But retention doesn't improve.
Why not?
You have a bad case of The Interesting-ness Problem.
When a user opens an app (IG, youtube, TikTok) they need juicy content within 7 seconds (or they bounce)
This is the "Interesting-ness" problem.
If you work in tech - joining a startup is a bad financial decision.
Employee
#1
gets 10x or 20x LESS equity a founder gets + takes a salary cut.
Big companies pay way more, and have less stress.
$$ wise - Start a startup or work at a big co
HIRING - a meme god.
+get paid $500/month (in bitcoin)
+get paid to make memes
+memes must be business/startup focused
+no vacation, no sick days, you're making memes ffs
looking for wit.
apply by DM'ing meme 3 memes.
Will attach examples of "good work" below:
I'm not saying I'm a genius
Or that Mark Zuckerberg reads my tweets.
But I am, and he does.
checkout this clip from
@lexfridman
pod with Zuck. He talks about the metaverse thread I wrote.
he mispronounces my name, but I'll let it slide. Easy to mixup "shaan" and "someone"
Here's a lesson on how to do cold outreach right.
Don't ask someone for "coffee" or a "quick 20 min call"
(or worst of all - "to pick their brain". You brain pickers stay away)
Here's an example of how my cousin hustled & got connected with
@chamath
OK let's try something fun.
I just minted a new NFT called "5 Minutes of Fame" on
@opensea
This is a 1 of 1.
And it's not just a picture, it has actual utility built in.
Here's how it works:
my
#1
hack for figuring out if someone is great to work with:
point out something they are wrong about
a) get defensive --> no go.
b) shutdown/get quiet --> no go.
c) quickly recognize truth ("oh shit, yea good point") = they're a keeper
I have zero interest buying a fancy car.
You know what I want? A personal in-home chef.
I can't think of a better way to spend money than on a chef.
how do I get one starting next week?
Part II - It's Not a Place, It's a Time
A time? wtf?
Yes, a moment in time.
You know in artificial intelligence, there's an idea of "the singularity"?
It's a moment in time where AI becomes smarter than humans. The moment when artificial intelligence > human intelligence
I invested in 47 startups in a year. Here's how the math shakes out:
$4m deployed , 47 companies ($85k avg check)
Median valuation I invested at = ~$16M
So... let's think out loud here..
So here's the situation.
Gamestop (GME) = a dying biz. circling the drain. Who goes to a store to buy games? It's basically a pokemon card dealership at this point. Plus with covid, malls are dead.
So some Hedge Funds are shorting the stock, betting it would go down.
An engineer who can “build anything” is worth $1M
An engineer who can figure out “what to build” is worth 100X that
In business, the GPS creates more value than the engine.
software is such a cheat code in the game of business. My first company was a restaurant. One of the worst businesses you can start (everyone told me this, but being young, I told them to kick rocks)
You want everyone vaccinated?
Don't lecture them with science.
Don't tell them there's "nothing to worry about"
Offer every vaccinated household a FREE 55" 4K TV.
$500 per household.
Get vax = get free TV.
You'll save lives & hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus
Brutally honest brand slogans
iPad: “it’s cheaper than a nanny”
Tiktok: “because watching your neighbors daughter thru the window would be weird”
TacoBell: “hey.. what’s one more bad decision going to hurt?”
Tupperware: “for food you want to throw away tomorrow, not today”
One fund in particular, Melvin Capital Managment - a multi-billion dollar hedge fund...had been accruing a big short position in gamestop. Usually you don't have to disclose your shorts - but these were 'listed put options' so some clever redditors discovered the position
Part I - Everyone is wrong
Most people think "the metaverse" is a virtual place.
Like in the movie Ready Player One.
A virtual world, like Minecraft, Roblox, or like Zuck showed in the facebook demo yesterday.
But what if it's not a place?