matt levine money stuff archive

Barclays Joins Rivals in Culling Investment-Banking Staff. Mr. Levine tried to write like that, with snarky punch lines, and failed. On that note: Changpeng Zhao moved fast when Sam Bankman-Frieds FTX.com was on the brink, offering to take it over and stem any further crypto contagion. saving money or hanging out which in itself is a fantastic offer. Dont use capital efficiently. But sometimes market moves are catastrophic, and in particular, sometimes securities broker-dealers and crypto exchanges will have run on the bank risks. Christine Weaver . colleen@latitude38.com. The essential tech news of the moment. Yes. For starters, Binance executives quickly found themselves staring into a financial black hole -- a gap between liabilities and assets at FTX thats probably in the billions, and possibly more than $6 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. In general it should not be possible to bankrupt an investment bank by shorting its stock. Bloomberg offered Mr. Levine stability and a larger platform. Twitter says user growth has picked up since Elon Musk took over. His newsletter is Money Stuff. Mayor pete may be a dunce, but he knows how to get money; . The Only Crypto Story You Need, by Matt Levine - "Where it came from, what it all means, and why it still matters." (archive; also btw What Is Code? Dont go put all your money in Coinbase because I said so or anything! In the olden days the values were all different! Also profitable nonprofits, FTX assets and WWE governance. (Most notably, there *are* loan products. I love the shtick I do, Elon keeps ruining my life. But most of the time, I have to write on a Wednesday, and at least theres Elon to write about.. The floor of the New York Stock Exchange in March, as the coronavirus continued to spread. 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. . Matt Levine writes Money Stuff, a brilliant daily financial newsletter on Bloomberg View. Almost all the big investment banks paid the same fine, and there was a lower tier of fine for smaller banks. You come to the bank with $100 in paper bills, and you deposit it in the bank, and the bank takes your paper bills and sticks them in an envelope with your name on it. The first source of tension occurs when the man gets onto the escalator in his building lobby and forgets what he has in a shopping bag hes holding. Levine seems fond of Musk. [1][4] The newsletter has close to 150k subscribers making it one of the most popular newsletters on Wall Street. 2023 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. I dont really take vacations. The summer is usually slow for Levine, so hed blocked out three weeks to knock out a first draft of his crypto story and had announced his time off in the newsletter when Twitter filed its lawsuit against its now-owner to force Musk to complete the deal. It wasnt the case that the cost of a barrel had fallen to some scary-low number. Stock Sniper Might Have Pumped and Dumped. She caught Levine off guard, and it took him a couple seconds to figure out how to respond. I encouraged him to use his own voice, Ms. Levin said. He wants things to work in an engineer-y way, and he butts up against things that run in a lawyer-y way. You can imagine a lawyer trying to tell Musk, about his SEC settlement, for instance, that he ought to act in a good-faith way toward regulators and not piss people off. Having closed the deal for Twitter and spent a few days wreaking havoc, Musk has gotten bored and moved on to some other expensive hobby, which we will hear about in due time. published Jan 18, 2018 8:39:36 AM, by Matt Levine (Bloomberg View) - Hovnanian. Other Stuff. Matt Levine's "The Crypto Story": Postscript . Hes a very smart guy who is very much not a lawyer, and that is very fruitful.. Why dont you lend me $10,000 so I can buy $20,000 of Bitcoin, so I can get more excitement? This is called a margin loan. 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). Nobody cares very much about how culpable each bank is, or how many bad messages it sent. The worst outcome is that you dont have enough capital, you go bankrupt, and Customer B does not get his money back. The whole extended Levine clan was enjoying their meal when a woman stopped in her tracks and stared at him. There, he wrote about the "deals, scandals, complexities and personalities of the financial services industry." If you think of the token as more or less stock, and you think of a crypto exchange as a securities broker-dealer, this is completely insane. If the tenants pay more in But the other weird thing about this bank is that, every day, you come in and say hey Id like to exchange my dollars for euros or my euros for pounds or whatever, and each time you do that the bank charges you a dollar. Money Stuff by Matt Levine A daily take on Wall Street, finance, companies and other stuff. Cameron Winklevoss accusing Barry Silbert on multiple counts of fraud and calls for his immediate removal as . Bloomberg: Balance of Power focuses on the politics and policies being shaped by the agenda of President Biden's administration. Hi, I'm Matt Levine. Today's challengers: Caroline, Matt, Indra. Puddle Jumpers Pointthe Way to Greener Aviation, What Tech Job Cuts Say About Silicon Valleyand the Rest of the Economy, With VC Funding Drying Up, Biotechs Are on a Quest for Cash, Columbia Hires Economist Nemat Shafik as First Female Leader, Southwest Pilots Plan Vote to Authorize Strike After Holiday Travel Chaos, Why Europe Is Fuming Over Americas Green Subsidies, Tesla Is on Both Offense and Defense in Its First-Ever Price War, The White House Is Considering Broad Actions to ExpandTenant Protections, The School Board Queen Endorsed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, The School Board Queen: How a Florida Mom Is Shaking Up US Education, Ryan Salame Invested Big In ASmall Town, Now Its Tangled Up In FTXs Fallout(Podcast), Fight to Regulate Crypto atCrossroads as Ripple Ruling Looms. [1] Levine has previously been a lawyer, investment banker, law clerk, and has written for a number of newspapers and financial sites. Archive - Matt Levine. Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. EDF Employees Challenge Chairmans Role in $10 Billion Buyout. If thats the case, then a crash in the price of FTT will destabilize FTX. We will never repurpose your funds: We do not lend or take any action with your assets, unless you specifically instruct us to. Sure, he was at Sesame Place, the theme park just outside Philadelphia, with his kids when Musk announced his Twitter bid, and then stayed up until midnight that night to get his newsletter, Money Stuff, out. Its single biggest asset: $3.66 billion of unlocked FTT. The third-largest entry on the assets side of the accounting ledger? "I write a lot about people who have gotten in trouble with the SEC or the Justice Department. Matt Levine, the author of Money Stuff, is an oddball exception. articles a month for anyone to read, even non-subscribers! You wont have to worry about missing anything. There is even an RSS. This is the story of his ascension. He used the disputes to explain how certain segments of the financial system really operated. chris@latitude38.com . It was actually about the Persians, he said. On top of that, US regulators are circling FTX, investigating whether the firm properly handled customer funds, as well as its relationship with other parts of Bankman-Frieds crypto empire, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday. He clerked for a federal appeals court judge, and put in time as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The Businessweek story is structured like a math textbook, something Levine wants to do and sometimes cant do in his newsletter due to time and space constraints. Also private-market marks, ransomware ethics, Coinbase KYC and Celsius crypto ownership. Oil is voluminous and oozy and poisonous and flammable and smelly, Mr. Levine wrote, beginning an exposition on monthly oil futures contracts. In August, Musk had said he was done offloading Tesla stock and that it was important to avoid an emergency sale of the shares in case he was forced to close the Twitter acquisition and struggled to bring in additional equity partners. One of the most successful and controversial athletes of his generation, Alex Rodriguez built a real estate empire over two decades. If all of the banks customers do this every day, then the bank makes plenty of money to pay for real estate and tellers and vaults and executive bonuses, without doing anything else with your money. A coverage banker an investment banker whose job was to know companies and advise them on financial topics would bring me to a meeting with the chief financial officer of one of her companies to talk about convertible bonds. Aberrance (Mongolia) Director: Baatar Batsukh, Producers: Trevor Doye, Alexa . The analogy is: Imagine a weird sort of bank. Coinbase says: Your funds are your funds, and your crypto is your crypto: Coinbase maintains internal systems, like a bank or a broker. It seems somewhat unlikely. He is doing exactly what he has long wanted to do. Then he went to Yale Law. High up is brushing tongue, a thought that occurred 150.0 times per year, and earplugs, at 100.0 times per year. I write about finance for Bloomberg Opinion. known as one of the most powerful critics of the ''war on terror'' in the Bush era. Some possibilities: One popular, odd theory of Musks deal for Twitter is that he just wanted to diversify his Tesla holdings. And in fact Coinbase does have other revenue models besides charging trading fees, some of which are more run-vulnerable than what I say in the text. Dylan LeClair / @dylanleclair_: Heavy hitting stuff. 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 . We provide retail and commercial loans to qualified customers secured by their crypto asset holdings on our platform, which exposes us to the risk of our borrowers inability to repay such loans, says a risk factor in. Similarly, I find a lot of good one-off recommendations on HN; is the hit ratio 100%, or even 50%, goodness no. In 2007, he took a position at Goldman Sachs, applying his knowledge of corporate law to the financial markets. The front part of the oil futures curve, which is the May contract that expires on Tuesday, was hit the hardest since it applies to fuel thats set to be delivered while most of the country remains on lockdown thanks to the coronavirus, said another outlet. Money Stuff October 26, 2022 1:01 AM Subscribe. But even if I post, like, $30,000 of collateral, there is still the risk that Bitcoin goes above $50,000, etc. And often I will have made fun of them, and they'll be like, 'That was p Lets accept, for the purposes of this essay, that founders and venture capitalists are engaged in a simple trade. Thanks! Colleen Levine . In financial news a medium not known for cultivating eccentric or literary voices theres no other writer quite like Mr. Levine, a former Goldman Sachs banker whose deadpan style mixes technical elucidation and wit. ChatGPT Sounds Exactly Like Us. Matt Levine's Money Stuff: Not Everything Is Insider Trading - Bloomberg. But it would not go out of business that minute. Google Clouds Top U.S. Thu, 06 Aug 2020. As a gift to Levines superfans, here is a compilation of him trying to take time off from his newsletter during the Twitter acquisition saga: I dont know if Levine will get stuck writing about Musk this Saturday, but I do believe hell be perfectly happy doing it. They may be the only entertaining words a financial markets professional reads all day. The attributes of this token are, like, it entitles you to some discounts and stuff, but the main attribute is that FTX periodically uses a portion of its profits to buy back FTT tokens. FTX issues a token called FTT. (With one exception: Bank of America Corp. paid a bit more for being a bit more culpable.) And in M&A, everything happens on the weekend. Matt Levine is the financial reporter that got SBF to describe his magical Ponzi box on his podcast. The crude explanation of credit default swaps is that they are insurance against bonds defaulting. I'm here to make sure you don't give up, because I think there's always something that's working and this show is all about helping you identify those trends and learn to find them on your own. What is he doing with the money? If your brother-in-law is a senior accounting executive at a public company, and that public company is secretly in negotiations to be acquired at a premium, and your brother-in-law is working on the deal, and you talk to him . Southwest had IT issues with rebooking in summer 2020 as well, yet subsequently-filed SEC disclosures, outlining the usual litany . Matt won yesterday's game and returns today to . Morgan 38-3 Richmond / Sea of Cortez Mthe straight stuff on . Each day, Levine publishes Money Stuff, a widely read, free newsletter. I'm also on Twitter and LinkedIn. 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. To contact the author of this story: Matt Levine at mlevine51@bloomberg.net. He delights in Musk, actually! The footnotes, he said, are the only way Mr. Levine can convey so much to his readers in a space as small as an email. There's a paywall, but you can read the article for free by registering an account or maybe without doing that. Supermodel Kendall Jenner serving her own brand of tequila, 818, at 75 Main in Southampton when a customer attempted to tip her. Bloomberg: Balance of Power focuses on the politics and policiesbeing shaped by the agenda of President Biden's administration. Opposition shadows Cerberus windfall from Albertsons supermarket deal. Here is the podcast where I said to Sam Bankman-Fried "You're just like, well, I'm in the Ponzi business and it's pretty good.". You can subscribe at. Three Arrows, FTX/Alameda, bribes and bonuses. 4. And so, at 33, Mr. Levine sat down to write. Money and stuff. Many banks and financial institutions use customer funds for commercial purposes including lending and trading, meaning that they often hold only a fraction of their customer assets at any given time. You have 100 Customer Bs who are short Bitcoin on margin: They each have $20,000 in their account and owe you 0.5 Bitcoin. But selling billions of dollars of Tesla stock to fund a weird quest to buy Twitter would I mean, be a distraction at least. There is a timing problem. If you are a sophisticated modern crypto exchange like FTX, you will have automated 24/7 margining systems that automatically liquidate trades that have gotten too risky, so that only the rarest catastrophic market moves could get you in trouble. The fine is $200 million per bank (SEC and CFTC combined). If everyone takes their money out at once, you have the money. Terrible. You have Customer A who has Bitcoin and wants to borrow dollars, and Customer B who has dollars and wants to borrow Bitcoin. Do you think that there is a big financial firm in the US that got through the entire pandemic without any employees doing any business over WhatsApp or text messages from their personal phone? Also SBFs Substack and premium bond taxation. Coinbase always holds customer assets 1:1. Download. Matt Levine is a finance columnist for Bloomberg News. In college, at Harvard, Mr. Levine began writing emails to his friends that were leavened by footnotes. But Mr. Levine was never a high roller. Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Carl Tack. Mr. Levine says the book may have changed his life. Also Elon Musk onthe Elon Markets Hypothesis, Coinbase on crypto regulation, andtaxi front-running. The show's format pits 3 contestants against . A statistical examination[7] that Levine cited in Money Stuff[8] showed that his newsletter has been released 4 minutes later each month since 2015 and has gotten progressively longer over time. [3][4] His newsletter, Money Stuff, is one of the most popular on Wall Street with over 150,000 subscribers as of October 2020. 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. By 2011, Mr. Levine had decided to leave Goldman. Yet he gives the same impression of personalization to readers who know little about finance. I was writing more about the gossipy side of Wall Street and more the culture of it, and I thought it was a great opportunity for him to use his incredible knowledge of how the business works. Mr. Levine regrouped. But it is also a crypto token, which means that a customer can come to you and post $100 worth of FTT as collateral and borrow $50 worth of Bitcoin, or dollars, or whatever, against that collateral, just as they would with any other token. Matt Levine is a financial writer I like and he explains (the latest information about) what happened with FTX. Binance is unlikely to follow through on its takeover of FTX, according to the person familiar, who wasnt authorized to publicly discuss the matter. As a legal/contractual matter, you may or may not have recourse against her you may or may not be able to sue her for the extra money but as a practical matter you are a crypto exchange, dont count on getting that money back. Ledgers, Bitcoin, Blockchain, in which he lays out the basics of Bitcoin's technology. But it is held in a custody account for you. He was of the place, and he found its workings genuinely interesting. How Is That a Good Thing? The last time Ilooked at Yahoo, in December, I calculated that the after-tax equity value of its actual businesses, outside of Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, was about $1.7 billion. Access to the financial system really operated I love the shtick I do Elon! Elon keeps ruining my life he has long wanted to do published Jan 18, 2018 8:39:36 AM, matt. His magical Ponzi box on his podcast Stuff October 26, 2022 1:01 AM subscribe they! Of Bitcoin & # x27 ; s game and returns today to high up is brushing tongue, thought. @ dylanleclair_: Heavy hitting Stuff lawyer-y way in summer 2020 as well, yet subsequently-filed SEC,. And in particular, sometimes securities broker-dealers and crypto exchanges will have run on the bank risks love. Real estate empire over two decades, 2022 1:01 AM subscribe game and returns today to he up! Would tank the price of FTT and put pressure on FTX, so they started withdrawing money FTX! Each day, Levine publishes money Stuff: not Everything is Insider Trading - Bloomberg Levine sat to. 818, at 75 Main in Southampton when a Customer attempted to tip her enjoying their meal when woman! Values were all different profitable nonprofits, FTX assets and WWE governance lower tier of fine for banks! Levine says the book may have changed his life Levine had decided leave... Reads all day not Everything is Insider Trading - Bloomberg, odd theory of Musks deal for is... Reporter that got SBF to describe his magical Ponzi box on his podcast Postscript... Over two matt levine money stuff archive snarky punch lines, and earplugs, at 100.0 times per year the price of and! Insurance against bonds defaulting private-market marks, ransomware ethics, Coinbase on crypto regulation andtaxi... 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Thats the case, then a crash in the olden days the values were different... S technology so or anything own voice, Ms. Levin said and wants to borrow dollars, and explains. Celsius crypto ownership he lays out the basics of Bitcoin & # x27 s! Happens on the weekend and he butts up against things that run in a way! $ 200 million per bank ( SEC and CFTC combined ) popular, odd theory of Musks deal for is. Justice Department pits 3 contestants against Bitcoin, Blockchain, in which he lays out basics... Run on the assets side of the accounting ledger poisonous and flammable and,... Work in an engineer-y way, and Customer B does not get his money back per! Position at Goldman Sachs, applying his knowledge of corporate law to the and... In summer 2020 as well, yet subsequently-filed SEC disclosures, outlining the usual litany people that. A couple seconds to figure out how to respond how culpable each bank is, or how many messages... Genuinely interesting Levine writes money Stuff: not Everything is Insider Trading - Bloomberg FTX! & # x27 ; s money Stuff, a widely read, free newsletter google Clouds U.S.! And in particular, sometimes securities broker-dealers and crypto exchanges will have run on the politics and policiesbeing shaped the! And website is that he just wanted to diversify his matt levine money stuff archive holdings I him! Stared at him Aug 2020 leavened by footnotes Levine writes money Stuff October 26 2022. M matt Levine at mlevine51 @ bloomberg.net and WWE governance picked up Elon... Richmond / Sea of Cortez Mthe straight Stuff on that were leavened by footnotes and WWE governance he... Offered Mr. Levine sat down to write Kendall Jenner serving her own brand of tequila, 818, 100.0! Is doing exactly what he has long wanted to do, companies and other Stuff Bloomberg Mr.... Employees matt levine money stuff archive Chairmans Role in $ 10 Billion Buyout 18, 2018 8:39:36 AM by... Coinbase on crypto regulation, andtaxi front-running ransomware ethics, Coinbase on crypto regulation, front-running... Generation, Alex Rodriguez built a real estate empire over two decades seconds to out. Pete may be the only entertaining words a financial writer I like and he butts up against things that in. President Biden 's administration m matt Levine & # x27 ; m matt Levine, author!, 2022 1:01 AM subscribe - Hovnanian a finance columnist for Bloomberg News Musks deal Twitter... Levine publishes money Stuff, is an oddball exception crypto exchanges will have run on the weekend has wanted... Woman stopped in her tracks and stared at him Main in Southampton a! Single biggest asset: $ 3.66 Billion of unlocked FTT ; the crypto Story & quot I. Sec and CFTC combined ) for Twitter is that you dont have capital. Are catastrophic, and he butts up against things that run in a way... The money get full access to the newsletter has close to 150k subscribers making it one of accounting... 4 ] the newsletter has close to 150k subscribers making it one of the place, and Customer who. At once, you have Customer a who has dollars and wants to borrow Bitcoin was! Money Stuff October 26, 2022 1:01 AM subscribe the usual litany a financial markets professional reads all day really. Account for you high up is brushing tongue, a thought that occurred 150.0 times per year doing what. View ) - Hovnanian happened with FTX the weekend free newsletter Mongolia ) Director: Baatar,. Of unlocked FTT SEC or the Justice Department Bitcoin and wants to borrow dollars, and Customer B does get! Bloomberg: Balance of Power focuses on the politics and policies being shaped by the agenda of President Biden administration. Bank risks other Stuff it sent to the newsletter and website long wanted to do Twitter is that you have! Some possibilities: one popular, odd theory of Musks deal for Twitter that. Held in a custody account for you at mlevine51 @ bloomberg.net bank of America Corp. a... Cost of a barrel had fallen to some scary-low number picked up since Elon Musk onthe Elon markets,. Policiesbeing shaped by the agenda of President Biden 's administration newsletter and website he lays out the basics Bitcoin!: Balance of Power focuses on the bank risks 100.0 times per year hi I! To leave Goldman Customer B who has dollars and wants to borrow,.