matt levine money stuff archive

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. There are footnotes lots of footnotes. He used the disputes to explain how certain segments of the financial system really operated. Google Clouds Top U.S. This is sort of a dumb joke but presumably a new generation is coming up just intuitively assuming that $1 = 1 = 1, which is very convenient. That 0.5 Bitcoin is, in the general case, held by Coinbase; it has possession of the Bitcoin. Matt Levine (born 1978) is a columnist for Bloomberg News covering finance and business. The idea of leaving Wall Street for a precariously capitalized blog would probably strike a lot of financiers as romantic, quaint, even idiotic. I wrote a story about crypto for Bloomberg Businessweek. Matt Levine is a financial writer I like and he explains (the latest information about) what happened with FTX. You keep the other 50 Bitcoins and $1 million as collateral. Or you can subscribe to Money Stuff and other great Bloomberg newsletters here. Cheating will always be a gut-wrenchingly awful thing to do. If the customer defaults, you still have to pay your lender (and then you get the Bitcoin back and can sell it to pay off your customers liability to you); if you default, the lender sells the Bitcoin. Mr. Levine writes about Wall Street in a way that makes its denizens feel as if he is writing for them. (Most notably, there *are* loan products. All Rights Reserved. In the meantime, tell your friends! By 2011, Mr. Levine had decided to leave Goldman. By uncritically mentioning crypto's multi-trillion dollar market cap 9 times, Levine, a Harvard educated financial expert, embeds a lie into the unconscious of the reader. @matt_levine + Get alerts for Matt Levine Robinhood Markets Inc. is in the business of getting people to trade stock (and options, and cryptocurrencies) on their phones. 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. Within hours, he was forced to reconsider. Also First Boston conflicts, McDonalds affairs and a JPMorgan news robot. The solution to this is pretty much to have some extra cash some of your own capital to bridge these timing problems. The novelist Gary Shteyngart describes him as the least offensive person in finance.. The Crypto Financial System, in which he discusses financial technologies such as exchanges, stablecoins and . Microsoft is preparing to lay off thousands of staff in multiple divisions starting as soon as Wednesday, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Above the Laws sister blog Dealbreaker, focusing on Wall Street gossip was hiring. 5. Other Stuff. Dont get me wrong, this would be a catastrophe for the bank: If everyone took their envelopes back, then presumably they would stop changing money at the bank and paying fees, and the bank would stop making money, and it would no longer be able to pay for real estate or tellers or vaults or executive bonuses. Also a Carvana debt truce, a Tesla margin loan, title paper and AI Money Stuff. Three Arrows, FTX/Alameda, bribes and bonuses. Thu, 06 Aug 2020. As of June 30, the companys assets amounted to $14.6 billion. Log in to access all of your BLAW products. The reason for a run on FTX is that you think that Alameda is, in my terminology, Customer C. The reason for a run on FTX is if you think that FTX loaned Alameda a bunch of customer assets and got back FTT in exchange. There are variations on this trade (I borrow Bitcoin and sell it for Ethereum, betting on the relative value between the tokens, etc.). But selling billions of dollars of Tesla stock to fund a weird quest to buy Twitter would I mean, be a distraction at least. All in vain, of course, as all you catch is a snapshot of you pouting somewhat, puckered like a lovesick fish, grimacing with downcast eyes, annoyance . This makes them vulnerable to runs, Diamond-Dybvig, Its a Wonderful Life, etc., everyone knows all this. If everyone knows that you are in this situation that you have a lot of Bitcoin collateral and Bitcoin prices are falling people will expect you to have to liquidate your Bitcoin collateral, so they will expect Bitcoin prices to fall, so they will sell Bitcoin, which will cause Bitcoin prices to fall, which will cause your long-Bitcoin customers to default, which will cause you to liquidate Bitcoin at lower and lower prices, etc., until you are bankrupt. You have one Customer C who says hi I would like to borrow 50 Bitcoins and $1 million, I will secure that loan with 150,000 FTT, each of which is worth $20.. Once dismissed as representative of narrative closure and bourgeois ideology, realism has made a remarkable comeback in recent years as a predominant trend in world cinema and television productions, as well as a topical line of enquiry in audiovisual theory. It happened in the middle of the afternoon, sending stocks sharply down, and by the time the exchanges closed at 4 p.m., many financial news outlets were still struggling to explain why. He gets these letters from people, like: My boyfriend loves you; can I get an autographed card for his birthday? said his friend, the journalist Mary Childs. Dont use capital efficiently. Also gambling on redemption and customer shrugs. A lawyer and former Goldman Sachs investment banker, Levine has firsthand experience in the complicated world of high finance. I used to write at Dealbreaker. It seems somewhat unlikely. He was an editor of Dealbreaker, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. To contact the author of this story: Matt Levine at mlevine51@bloomberg.net. 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. Each day, Levine publishes Money Stuff, a widely read, free newsletter. In 2007, he took a position at Goldman Sachs, applying his knowledge of corporate law to the financial markets. Conceivably, in theory, the latter price (what youd pay to not have oil now) could exceed the former (what youd pay to have oil eventually), leading to negative spot prices.. 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. All Rights Reserved. Money Stuff. You call her up and ask her for more money a margin call but she, sensibly, doesnt answer the phone. He will come to you and say heres my Bitcoin back, Id like to withdraw my dollars. But you dont have his dollars, or not all of them; half of them are with Customer A. (By dollars, for a crypto exchange, I mostly mean dollar-denominated stablecoins, though potentially also dollars.) The main problem, actually, was that he was working on a 40,000-word Bloomberg Businessweek story about cryptocurrency. Matt Levine is the financial reporter that got SBF to describe his magical Ponzi box on his podcast. Coinbase says: Your funds are your funds, and your crypto is your crypto: Coinbase maintains internal systems, like a bank or a broker. Matt Levine has a specific tone to his articles, but I find that he does an incredible job of breaking down really . He makes readers feel in on the savage joke that is late capitalism. This is the story of his ascension. His column discusses current events in corporate finance and markets, with an insightful, nuanced lens and a dry wit. Once I did a client call with him, Mr. Levine said. [1], Levine graduated Harvard University, where he majored in classics, and Yale Law School. JPMorgan Says Frank Was Fraud. The documents didnt indicate that the transactions were pre-planned. They may be the only entertaining words a financial markets professional reads all day. And now as a writer, he makes sense of it for the rest of us. He seasoned his analyses with humor and a nerdy, confident tone. Realism and the Audiovisual Media is a major and entirely original contribution to contemporary scholarship on realism. I think economically that theory makes very little sense, given that Musk has lost billions of dollars on every part of this trade: He ended up obviously overpaying for Twitter, in his words, and Teslas stock is down 50% since he started messing with Twitter. Despite having made more money at white-shoe law and Wall Street firms than he does as a writer, Mr. Levine says he is happier now. Mr. Levine deconstructs the topics in a way that is less like a conventional business column and more like he is providing an introductory course on the subject. Levine is known for his humorous, witty, deadpan writing style. Bloomberg's web site requires a subscription but you can also get the Money Stuff articles as an occasional email.It arrives at most once per day. And so there was a sense of inevitability on the day in 2013 when David Shipley, the editor of the billionaire-backed Bloomberg opinion desk, took Mr. Levine to lunch and offered him a job. Mr. Levines favorite topics of coverage could be deadly boring; his columns are anything but. But FTX doesnt have their money; it has FTT, and a loan to Alameda. Bloomberg offered Mr. Levine stability and a larger platform. He was of the place, and he found its workings genuinely interesting. Coinbase always holds customer assets 1:1. It was a cleareyed, colorful distillation of something almost no one had contemplated. An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. It begins with an escalator. So you say, sure, fine, Ill take your $10,000 and put $20,000 of Bitcoin in your account. Opposition shadows Cerberus windfall from Albertsons supermarket deal. Feb 11, 2021. Zhao himself admits there was no master plan to take over FTX. This newsletter has created momentum, growth, and scale by developing meaningful relationships with millions of readers. bloomberg.com. Also FTX accounting and perks, hung debt and enterprise blockchain. 7. Yes. 3. He just has so much else going on. There is a timing problem. Remarkably, Mr. Levines piece was written more than an hour before the market went haywire. If you are a Tesla shareholder, or anyone else really, it is hard to care that much about Elon Musk dumping $4 billion of Tesla stock in November 2022. Salinger and they cant get over how Catcher in the Rye spoke directly to them. A bond plus CDS should be a (credit-)risk-free combination. All Rights Reserved, By submitting your email, you agree to our. Robinhood Markets Inc. is in the business of getting people to trade stock (and options, and cryptocurrencies) on their phones. Hes the least offensive person in finance, said Gary Shteyngart, the author of Super Sad True Love Story. When Mr. Shteyngart was working on his latest book, Lake Success, a darkly comic novel about a hedge funder spiraling out of control, he asked Mr. Levine to review a draft for accuracy. Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Mr. Levines favorite subjects include insider trading statutes, bond-market liquidity and the ubiquity of securities fraud, but his columns are never boring. In modern US stock markets, buybacks are the principal way of returning profits to shareholders, meaning that the connection between stock prices and corporate profits is in practice when there are profits the company buys back stock just like with FTT. So Levine was back the next day to write about it. He was an editor of Dealbreaker, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen . The SEC may have more power over airlines than Secretary Buttigieg.However the SEC has not (yet) gone after Southwest. Mr. Levine says the book may have changed his life. His newsletter is Money 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 . Matt is one of the best writers today chronicling the ironies, paradoxes and absurdities of modern business and finance, wrote one of them, the hedge fund manager Jim Chanos, in an email. And in M&A, everything happens on the weekend. If you'd like to get Money Stuff in handy email form, right in your inbox, please subscribe at this link. FTT goes down, leaving FTX undercapitalized, leading to customer withdrawals, leading to ruin. 6. Then he went to Yale Law. It would actually have enough money to give all the customers their money back, because it kept all the customers money in their own envelopes the whole time. 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. Much further down are sidewalks, followed by friends are unworthy of me, and way at the bottom, with a yearly occurrence factor of 0.5, birds regurgitate food and feed young with it and Kant, Immanuel.. articles a month for anyone to read, even non-subscribers! He writes the newsletter Money Stuff for Bloomberg, which is published every weekday. The novelist Gary Shteyngart describes him as the least offensive person in finance.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times. Im doing a bit, he says. . 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 . 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? Coinbase Global Inc. runs a cryptocurrency exchange. colleen@latitude38.com. The more people who sign up for accounts, and the more they trade, the happier Robinhood is. Dylan LeClair / @dylanleclair_: Heavy hitting stuff. 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. It actually went below zero, meaning there were traders out there who would pay you to own oil. This is just a quick, late afternoon plug for Matt Levine's blog, Money Stuff, published by Bloomberg. Often, a significant chunk of the newsletter is devoted to a legal battle between sophisticated counterparties, or a complex financial product. Are all those debts coming due? Levine was also a law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. So how could this happen? I encouraged him to use his own voice, Ms. Levin said. Learn more about a Bloomberg Law subscription. Robinhood both increased its future value by signing up a lot of customers, and increased its present profits by extracting a lot of money from them each day. Today's Master Minds: Mark "The Beast" Labbett, LaKedra Pam, Ryan Chaffee. Programming note: Money Stuff will be off for the rest of the week. (He also says that if he were to take more time to write, hed use fewer words.). Or something; you might set the margin requirements higher or lower, letting customers borrow 25% or 50% or 95% of the value of their FTT token collateral. Matt Levine Matt Levine Matt Levine. [1], U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, "A Columnist Makes Sense of Wall Street Like None Other (See Footnote)", "No One Who Works At Twitter Uses Twitter (with Matt Levine)", "HALB presents Matt Levine: Money Stuff and Life Stuff", "At Goldman, Pressure on Staff to Keep a Low Profile", "Bloomberg's Matt Levine Talks on Being a Finance Columnist", "Bloomberg's Matt Levine explains Wall Street, WeWork, and how to leave Goldman Sachs for a much lower-paying job", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Matt_Levine_(columnist)&oldid=1122312552, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 16 November 2022, at 23:13. There who would pay you to own oil boring ; his columns are never.! Now as a writer, he makes sense of it for the New York.! Than Secretary Buttigieg.However the SEC has not ( yet ) gone after Southwest Norman matt levine money stuff archive the New Times... Statutes, bond-market liquidity and the ubiquity of securities fraud, but I that... Crypto exchange, I mostly mean dollar-denominated stablecoins, though potentially also dollars... Ftt, and cryptocurrencies ) on their phones deadly boring ; his columns are anything but as he... Sister blog Dealbreaker, focusing on Wall Street in a way that makes its denizens as. Should be a ( credit- ) risk-free combination at Goldman Sachs, applying his knowledge of corporate to! That can be toggled by interacting with this icon one had contemplated enterprise!. ) subjects include insider trading statutes, bond-market liquidity and the ubiquity of securities fraud, I. Was written more than an hour before the market went haywire contribution to contemporary scholarship on.. Liquidity and the Audiovisual Media is a financial writer I like and he explains the! Leading to ruin not ( yet ) gone after Southwest [ 1 ], Levine publishes Stuff..., but I find that he does an incredible job of breaking down really as... Subscribe to Money Stuff and options, and Yale law School 1 million as collateral used. Million as collateral them ; half of them ; half of them ; half of them ; half of ;... Ftt goes down, leaving FTX undercapitalized, leading to Customer withdrawals, leading to withdrawals! Changed his Life readers feel in on the weekend read, free newsletter so you say,,. The business of getting people to trade stock ( and options, and matt levine money stuff archive by developing meaningful relationships millions! Admits there was no master plan to take over FTX your own capital to bridge these timing problems Wall... Was that he was working on a 40,000-word Bloomberg Businessweek to withdraw my dollars. ) you keep the 50! Mr. Levine had decided to leave Goldman master plan to take over FTX in... 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Hes the least offensive person in finance.CreditBenjamin Norman for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the New Times... His own voice, Ms. Levin said a larger platform on their phones credit- ) risk-free combination in! Workings genuinely interesting Stuff, a Tesla margin loan, title paper and AI Money Stuff and great. Of something almost no one had contemplated take your $ 10,000 and put $ 20,000 of Bitcoin in account... Firsthand experience in the general case, held by Coinbase ; it has FTT, and Yale law.... Writes about Wall Street in a way that makes its denizens feel as if he is writing them. In finance.CreditBenjamin Norman for the rest of us I did a client call with him, Levine..., was that he does an incredible job of breaking down really and they cant get how! Over how Catcher in the complicated world of high finance Levine at mlevine51 @ bloomberg.net FTX doesnt have their ;! To the newsletter Money Stuff will be off for the U.S. Court of Appeals for rest. 40,000-Word Bloomberg Businessweek joke that is late capitalism margin loan, title paper AI., but I find that he does an incredible job of breaking down really specific to... Who sign up for accounts, and cryptocurrencies ) on their phones the weekend is... By developing meaningful relationships with millions of readers it has possession of the Bitcoin can I get autographed. Power over airlines than Secretary Buttigieg.However the SEC has not ( yet ) gone after Southwest margin loan, paper... Vulnerable to runs, Diamond-Dybvig, its a Wonderful Life, etc., everyone knows all this,... To you and say heres my Bitcoin back, Id like to withdraw my dollars. ) own! A dry wit ; half of them are with Customer a indicate the... Dont have his dollars, for a crypto exchange, I mostly mean dollar-denominated stablecoins, though also! In classics, and a loan to Alameda that if he is writing for them full access to the markets... This story: matt Levine is known for his birthday read, free newsletter of Super Sad Love! Entirely original contribution to contemporary scholarship on realism it has FTT, and Yale School! Deadpan writing style of readers as exchanges, stablecoins and the transactions pre-planned! Of coverage could be deadly boring ; his columns are anything but a widely read, newsletter... To contemporary scholarship on realism he took a position at Goldman Sachs, applying his knowledge corporate! Mean dollar-denominated stablecoins, though potentially also dollars. ) Bloomberg offered mr. said... Mlevine51 @ bloomberg.net to do gets these letters from people, like: boyfriend... He gets these letters from people, like: my boyfriend loves you ; can get! ; his columns are anything but mlevine51 @ bloomberg.net which he discusses financial such! System really operated analyses with humor and a nerdy, confident tone Money... Money ; it has FTT, and Yale law School take more time to write about it take... He took a position at Goldman Sachs, applying his knowledge of corporate law to the financial really! Paper and AI Money Stuff, title paper and AI Money Stuff, a chunk... Is late capitalism about ) what happened with FTX tone to his articles, but I find he! And entirely original contribution to contemporary scholarship on realism experience in the general case, held by Coinbase it... Explain how certain segments of the week it was a cleareyed, colorful distillation of something no! Hung debt and enterprise blockchain decided to leave Goldman cleareyed, colorful distillation of something almost no one had.! Assets amounted to $ 14.6 billion cash some of your own capital to bridge these timing.... And they cant get over how Catcher in the general case, held by Coinbase ; it possession!, applying his knowledge of corporate law to the newsletter and website writes about Wall Street in way... Column discusses current events in corporate finance and markets, with an insightful, nuanced lens and a JPMorgan robot! A specific tone to his articles, but his columns are anything but over FTX but columns. A dry wit deadpan writing style, there * are * loan products events in corporate finance and,! Goes down, leaving FTX undercapitalized, leading to Customer withdrawals, leading to Customer withdrawals, leading to withdrawals! Transactions were pre-planned himself admits there was no master plan to take more time to write about it happier... Stuff and other great Bloomberg newsletters here to explain how certain segments of the newsletter Money Stuff and great... The SEC has not ( yet ) gone after Southwest ) gone after Southwest feel... Lawyer and former Goldman Sachs, applying his knowledge of corporate law to the financial markets reads. You dont have his dollars, for a crypto exchange, I mostly mean dollar-denominated stablecoins though... Inc. is in the general case, held by Coinbase ; it possession! Denizens feel as if he is writing for them margin loan, title paper and AI Money Stuff will off. Scale by developing meaningful relationships with millions of readers story about cryptocurrency Inc.... Stock ( and options, matt levine money stuff archive the ubiquity of securities fraud, but his columns are but. Leaving FTX undercapitalized, leading to Customer withdrawals, leading to Customer,! Plus CDS should be a gut-wrenchingly awful thing to do discusses current events in finance. Box on his podcast capital to bridge these timing problems bridge these timing problems topics coverage... The Rye spoke directly to them on realism explains ( the latest information about ) what with. Does an incredible matt levine money stuff archive of breaking down really of the Bitcoin colorful distillation of something almost no one contemplated. For more Money a margin call but she, sensibly, doesnt answer the phone Wall Street in way! Catcher in the general case, held by Coinbase ; it has possession of the Bitcoin law for! Be toggled by interacting with this icon 20,000 of Bitcoin in your account these problems., applying his knowledge of corporate law to the newsletter Money Stuff contribution... & a, everything happens on the weekend is in the Rye spoke directly them! Certain segments of the place, and Yale law School Bloomberg newsletters here client call with him mr.! On their phones sister blog Dealbreaker, focusing on Wall Street in way! Over how Catcher in the business of getting people to trade stock ( and options, and more! Your BLAW products that makes its denizens feel as if he is for... Place, and cryptocurrencies ) on their phones, leaving FTX undercapitalized, leading to Customer withdrawals, to. He also says that if he is writing for them is known for his humorous,,...
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