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It's been two weeks since they've heard.
Our scratchy voices.
Yeah, I sound pretty good.
You do sound pretty good. Yeah, I probably sound most like myself. But I have been sick.
Yeah, you also got a haircut. Not that that matters.
No, it's an audio podcast. But no. We took last week off because I was taking my children to a water park. But also I got extremely sick, and so I couldn't have recorded anyway. I lost my voice. I was like standing at the water park very quietly saying don't go in there.
So really it was in the listener's best interests, was it ever, Yeah, so that they didn't have to hear that voice. But we're back now, and boy, we have some stuff to talk about.
I'm convincing. Hello, and welcome to the Money Stuff Podcast. You're a weekly podcast wherever you talk about stuff related to money. I'm Matt Levine and I write the Money Stuff column for Bloomberg Opinion.
And I'm Katie Greifeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and an anchor for Bloomberg Television.
What is all this stuff we have to talk about today? Katie?
Okay, We're coming in hot because the first ever private crediting TF has finally launched. We're going to talk about Bill Ackman's dreams of being a baby Berkshire, and then we're going to talk about info Wars and an interesting bid to try and buy it.
Private CREDITYTF, the.
Sp D r SSGA, Apollo IG Private Credit ETF. It launched on Thursday. Yes, and I have to say, I'm kind of shocked that this launched.
You didn't he do it? And we've talked about this like more than fifteen times on the show.
Yeah, And and a lot of people in the industry too are shocked that it launched. Interesting, it feels like that.
I feel like, is this partly like when they filed for it, it was like there are rules and now there are no rules. Ors not related to that at all.
So I was thinking about that. You know, we are in a brave new world. We have a new SEC. This was filed in September twenty twenty four. It's launching February twenty seventh, twenty twenty five. I mean they didn't make arguments. I don't think that Apollo and State Street didn't put any meaningful thought into.
This, but I have no problem, Like I'm not surprised that it launched. I tell me why, because like you could do anything, Man, it's an ETF, Like why not?
Like, what's what if this launched in twenty twenty four? Would you have been surprised?
No? I asked about like now that we have no rules as that would make it, But like I would have thought it was fine in twenty twenty four, which is probably why they filed it.
So there's a lot of question marks about and we've talked about this too, like how you put securities as a liquid as private credit into a very public wrapper, what withdrawals look like, and whether you could run into some problems there. There's rules that more than fifteen percent of an open ended fund can't be in a liquid securities. Private credit oly is considered in a liquid security. But the CTF is going to invest ten to thirty five
percent of its holdings in private credit. And the argument that State Street and Apollo made was basically that you know, Apollo is going to provide that liquidity. They have this trading desk, They're going to both supply the private credit assets for this fund, and they're also going to buy them back. They're contractually obligated to buy them back. So it seems like the SEC agreed with that argument because this thing is trading.
I think that argument is basically correct. Right. There's a range of stuff that is quote private credit, right, and like one thing that is private credit is business development companies, which are you know, often like middle market direct lending companies that are private credit companies in a public wrapper, right, like they provide non bank privately negotiated loans to companies, but like they're provided out of a public buol of capital.
So im I understanding is there's some ability to put like BBC shares into this thing, which is liquid private credit, no problem. Some large percentage of what they're going to do is like Apollo private credit loans that like Apollo will make a market in and they will be able
to trade with apollow at that market. And yeah, it's like solves the problem, right, because like the problem is, you know, you have the possibility of the fund expanding and contracting each day because like if more public buyers want to buy, then it'll have to expend. And if you have a very i liquid, hard to source, hard to sell asset, like we've talked about like private companies where it's like, you know, you can only get so many SpaceX shares. If you have that, it's hard to
expand and contract. But like if you have Apollo, which has a massive supply of private credit and like you know, its own balance sheet and its ability to buy some back, then like Apollo can be the like accordion for the expanding and contracting of the ETF. And it seems fun. What's wrong with that?
Well, let me read you something from morning Star analyst Brian Moriarity, and I will note that morning Star tends not to like things that are a little too crazy, like they hate what's going on.
I love things that are a little too crazy. That's the problem right here.
I'm like, oh yeah, they are very spiritually opposed to you know, funny business. But this is what moriogy business.
Is, My whole business.
Moriarity, I had to say, Apollo's liquidity facility is subject to a daily limit, and this daily limit remains undefined. It's possible the fund could have to meet way more redemptions in a day than the limit. That could force State Street to sell more liquid public securities first, potentially leaving the ETF with more liquid private credit instruments as a percentage of assets, and increasing the risks of a
liquidity crunch. Okay, wait, I like this line. When this happens, the portfolio often begins to manage the advisor rather than the other way around.
Okay, that's a cool line. I agree with that. I think it's like when they start with like zero dollars of assets, like it's not irrelevant consideration, right, Like, this is clearly like they're gonna see where it goes. Apollo's trading desk has some risk limit, and like that risk limit is more than adequate to deal with redemptions on the first day when it will clearly be net creating, right, Like, they're not gonna have net redemptions for.
Two weeks, right, I suppose.
Like if they had net redemptions in the next two weeks, they would be very small because it's all fun. But right, if this becomes a twenty billion dollar ETF, then there will be material risks of Apollo not being able to absorb all of the private credit if it goes from twenty billion to zero overnight. Yeah, my assumption is that everyone's like, Wow, that'll be a nice problem to have when we come to it, right, Yeah, but no, I
think it like a modest size. It's like, yeah, this is a fun proof of concept for Apollo, and they would trade the paper. They also get to make the price in a not competitive environment, right, like in a world where Apollo thinks we're doing rate private credit loans and all of our loans are fantastic and like retail shareholders of the ETF are pulling out, then for Apollo to be like the Marcus sixty cents on the dollar, will buy as much as you want, it seems fine for them. I don't know.
Yeah, well, there's skepticism that I've seen the fact that okay, Apollo is supplying the private credit and it's also contractually obligated to buy it back. I did see some people comparing this to like the fox guarding the Henhouse.
One thing that I think, Yeah, I think they're creating private credit to sell to the public and they're trying to make money on it, like of course, well, also, where do you think they're.
Doing In the filing, it also says to sort of I don't know, ease that worry. The ability to sell the instruments to Apollo is not exclusive. So if State Street the right find another bid, Yeah, they found a better bid somewhere else, they wouldn't have to necessarily sell.
To a sure great Yeah No, I mean look, I mean like when we've talked about not only the content of the ECF, right, Like, Apollo is trying to build up a market for private credit, right, and I think they'd be thrilled to live in a world where once State Street wants to sell it's private credit, it can get bids from twenty anonymous firms on an electronic platform, right, Like that's that's a good world for a private credit
originator to live in. But yeah, like they think they are smart evaluators of private credit and this is a like retail place into which to put it, Like yeah, yeah, they're hoping to make money. The thing I say is like on this liquidity worry, The thing I always write about private credit is that it's a really good funding model for loans. Right, Like you are Apollo. You raise money from like classically insurance companies are like you know,
in policy case, they own ans, they are an insurance company. Right, You raise money from insurance companies and you have this very like long term locked up capital and you use it to make long term, somewhat risky loans that don't trade, right, And that's a good match of liabilities and assets, right, Like you are raising long term money to make long term loans, it's a better match of liability and assets them like classic bank lending, where the banks raise overnight
money to make thirty year loans. The private credit model has always struck me as being unusually not runnable, right, Like you can't usually, I mean you sort of can. You don't really like redeem your life insurance policy, right, So, like the theene has like really long term money and if like credit gets worse, like no one is clamoring to get their money back, so Athene can kind of
ride that out. The theene is Apollo is like captive, but once you do it in a like instant liquidity retail vehicle, like that changes a little bit, right, And it's like for the retail vehicle, the liquidity is like whatever,
it's rodded by Apollo. But for Apollo, it's like you've shifted your funding model so that it went from being like arguably one hundred percent of your funding is from insurance company clients, where like it's like permanent funding to a small but you hope growing percentage of your funding comes from retail investors who can take their money out at any time. I think gets like a little bit more fragile. It's like, you know, I wouldn't worry so much about the fund being able to get its money
back out of Apollo. I worry a little bit like Apollo, like making its funding model a little bit worse. But you can understand why they think it's worth the risk because one again, they're starting from nothing, so it's like day one, that risk is very small. Yeah, and then too if it gets really big, then it's a nice problem to have.
I cannot wait to see how this is received. I mean day one is Thursday. I mean I can't wait to see what will look like on Monday, what it'll look like in two weeks, two months, et cetera, what the reception will be like.
It's not that private credity. Yeah, very is like this hot asset class and subs. But it's also it's like, yeah, you get like, you know, slightly better than Bonder. Yeah. It's not like space X, right, It's not like a lottery ticket. Right, It's like, yeah, it's like a slightly higher fixed think of an investment.
That's true, but still, I mean, it feels like there's been so much anticipation for this, certainly. I mean you think about the big splash that this filing made at the time. Maybe that was just a nice podcast as discussed on the Money Stuff podcast, I was not.
Like hearing on the subway. People have been like, oh my gosh, did you see there's a private credit ETF coming.
Well, this will be a good reality check to see whether this sort of lives up to the hype, at least in the ETF world. It's a big moment both for the ETF world but also for just the world of private assets.
Oh yeah, I mean I do think and we've talked about this too. Like the idea that private credit won't trade on an electronic platform like m it was just like a weird like blip in time, Like there's no reason for that. Like in five years altho it would be like big electronic trading platforms for private credit loands like sure are why not? It's fine?
Yeah. Also, if we stretch our imaginations, and this is something that I haven't really had time to do yet, But the fact that this is a partnership between you know, an ETF firm established ETF firm State Street with Apollo, which is acting as look provider. You could dream of how that model evolves. Some people, including morning Star, have pointed to we'll probably see more of these liquidity partnerships in the future.
Yeah, although like that is also possibly transitional, right, And like in a world where like there is easy liquid trading of private credit, if you're an ETF provider and you're looking to start at private credit ETF, you'll pregner with like Chain Street or something. It's just like a liquidity provider, not an originator, right, but like for now the originators are they are the liquidity providers, and right every other originator is probably going to get into having an ETF.
Yeah. Also, the fee seventy basis points is that high. I mean, it's not low, but considering the I don't know what the cost for a retail investor, like an average individual investor to get access to private credit now without an ETF would cost. I will say there's some like leverage single stock ETFs that cost more than one percent. So this is pretty I mean was for credib for a brand new product, a brand new category, actively managed
obviously some many basis points. Is really cheap all things considered.
Yeah, this is not their business, you know, Yeah, I think got a lot going on. This is a fascinating proof of concept for like, you know, Apollo is pushed to like be your one stop retirement provider, right yeah, and you know you don't need to make a lot of money on this one product in the.
First week, but maybe they will. Okay, Bill Ackman, friend of the show, Bill Ackman making some interesting moves, trying to reinvent himself sort of sort.
Of only sort of. It's so hard to understand what a hedgehund is. Like when I was like growing up in finance, like that dge fund managers where guys like Bill Aackman who like ran kind of concentrated equity ish activist ish you know, like got their got in the news, like got went on TV. And now like a hedge fund is more back to the classical hedged notion where it's like these much more you know, multi strategy, multi
manager factor neutrol. Yeah, kind of quantity funds. But like back when like the kings of the hedgehund world were like the Bill Ackmans. It was like a lot of them kind of positioned themselves as success was to Warren Buffett, it was a hedgehund manager for a little while. Right, It's like you build an investment partnership where you make concentrated long term bets on stocks you really like, and you're smart and have a public persona and go on
TV and that's your business. And like you're self consciously a like Graham and Dot value investor, and like you're sort of your your investing framework is kind of similar to Warren Buffett's. I think that one thing that Bill Ackman in particular has learned is that in addition to being good at Graham and Dodd and being folksy, Warren Buffett has a structural advantage. Like he runs a company and that's more useful to him than running a hedge fund.
And in particular, it seemed to me that Bill Lackman really wants to have a thing that is his investment vehicle that trades at a premium and that people are like willing to pay up to have money managed by Bill Ackman. And it has been funny over the last year or two watching him like fail to achieve that with like his clothes end fund Ipo.
Also heavily discussed on this pot I have discussed.
On this podcast. And now what he wants to do, He's like, start over. We're gonna do Warren Buffet, We're gonna do Berkshire Hathway. We're going to do is we're going to buy a small, weird, random company and turn it into a gigantic investment vehicle for like Bill Ackman making some public stock investments, making some one hundred percent acquisitions of companies, just being Warren Buffett, just being an acchoir and an investor and a public figure. And I say, like,
buy some random company. But it's not a random company. It's like Howard Hughes, which is a company that he has a long history of. It's like spun out of Dtart, which is one of his most successful investments. He was the chairman of the company for a while, and Pershing Square currently owns like thirty something percent of it. And what he wants to do now is one buy a little more, partly to get his take up and partly
to just inject money into the company. And then too like become the head of the company and let the people who are currently running it's real estate business, be like one little segment of the company, and then let him and his investing team make investments for the company, make acquisitions for the company so that it can become a borkshare, so that in twenty years you'll think of Howard Hughes as a you know, insurance and tech and whatever company, and it's real estate will be an interesting
historical side note. Well, that's also funny that, like it's called Howard Hughes like a guy's name and it's not real lacking. Yeah, that's the change in there.
I was googling about it, and I kept getting the guy himself. It's not what I wanted. Yeah, it's a three point nine billion dollar arche cap company. It's heavily involved in real estate, including the seaport for our Manhattan
natives here. You know what's funny is that they reported earnings today, which is Thursday when we're recording this, and I was reading through the earnings call and they did make a note that the Special Committee of our Border Directors is responsible for evaluating Pershing Square's most recent scheduled thirteen dfiling and the associated proposed transactions. Thus they will not answer any.
Questions do I love it?
Well, they got a question about it, obviously it did take a few questions to get there. But John Kim from BMO Capital Markets was the brave, brave analyst who spoke up and said, I was wondering if you could provide any sense at all as far as timing of when there will be an update, and I just wanted to confirm the transaction needs BORD approval and not shareholder
approval to move forward. Question Mark CEO David Riley said that the Pershing Square thirteen DEEN filing is between the Special Committe in Pershing Square, and I'm going to leave any comments in timing or otherwise for them to opine on. So, yeah, scant detail.
Actually, in my prior life, knowing whether that transaction buying like tennis percent of the company when you're already a thirty percent holder, Knowing whether that transaction required shareholder river was like a surprisingly large part of my prior life. But I've never forgotten. Let someone else figure that out.
God, that would have been so good to bring to this pod.
No, it's shockingly boring.
That's what we aim for here at the Money Stuff Podcast. Shockingly boring. I have some questions. One, so it's a three point nine billion dollar company. It's a good company, he has a long history with it. Why not just take Pershing Square public?
Wasn't no, No, because because you have to have a regular company. Okay, it's the real estate companies.
It's like, take your hedge fund public and be this.
Is what this is what he tried. He tried, I mean not the hedge fund, but he tried to take a close and fund public. Yeah, but it turns out that if you just have closed unfund, it won't trade at a premium, and then like all of the magic goes away.
I thought that the closed end fund was launching as a step in taking Pershing Square itself public.
Yeah, But taking Pushing Square itself public is is not quite the same thing, because when you take a hedge fund company public, you're capitalizing a fee stream. Yeah, And he doesn't want to sell a fee stream. He wants to sell a pot of investments at a premium. Right. It's now breaking my brand a little bit to think about taking a hedgehund company public and then in that hedge fund company buying assets. But it just seems it seems like a weird sort of cannibalism or something.
Okay, not doesn't like it.
I don't know why. But to me the question is like, Okay, you like Howard Hughes, but like there's three thousand companies out there, just by any one of them doesn't matter. Like we talked about like Brad Jacobs and QX out buying, like just like the most random software company to like, yeah, build his logistics upire out of it. It doesn't matter. They just get rid of the software company and then you have your you know, clean sheld to do logistics
that far. I wrote once about GameStop in addition to being game Stop, it's like controlled by Ryan Cohen's the CEO, and like at some point they put an announcement being like he's going to be able to make equity investments with the company Treasure. It's like you can build Berkshire Hathaway out of game Stop, and you should because it will trade it at premium and people will love it. Right, But it's like that Ryan Cohen already has that one.
But yeah, Bill Ackman could buy you know, all sorts of weird companies and turn them into Berkshire Hathaway.
Yeah, I mean you did write in your column that someone suggested he buy Earl. Yeah, yeah, that would have been pretty good. I would love to add I mean I know that I can't that this is the matter of the Special Committee of the Board of Directors, but I would love to know how Howard Hughes feels about this.
Right, it's weird because you're like here, you are trying to run your business.
Yeah, trying to do your earning.
School, like, no, we want to build yeah, totally unrelated hedge fund. Like if you're like running the textile mill that is Berkshire Hathaway and like Warren Buffett comes in and says, I'm going to build a business empire and like get rid of the textiles. I don't know. It's like a mixed bag. Yeah, it's like probably good for shareholders, but it's kind of weird. Yeah.
I wonder if if this goes through, whether or not Bill Ackman would tweet us. But no, you thinkin maybe he'd tweets more.
Oh yeah, more because you get like, like the thing you're aiming to do interested in. Yes, the thing you're aiming to do is like make investments and like be a creative to the value both of your investments and of like your vehicle. Howard huesed by, like people would be like ooh, you know, like yeah, you like Warren
Buffett had the ability for a long time. It's like go to a company and be like, I will put a billion dollars into your company at like a thirty percent discount to your stock price, and the stock would double,
and so it's like worth it to the company. And like Warren Buffett would make a lot of money off of it, right, Like he had like the self fulfilling prophecy ability right where he could invest money in a company and just that investment would make the company go up, and so he could like monetize that and like Blackman wants that too. And the way Blackman gets it is like one by like making good investments so that people like his track record, but then two by tweeting a lot.
Right, well, let me let me refrace. Then I wonder if peopill tweet about different things. I don't know.
I don't know either. I think that he thinks that this is working.
Maybe it is. I will say, it's interesting to me reading this column and then preparing for this podcast. You know, I grew up just with Warren Buffett as Warren Buffett, and I haven't really thought deeply about his model before. How he did just buy a random company and start doing this.
Yeah, it's like it's it's similar, like he was running a hedge fund and like they made an investment in this textile company and he got mad at them. I forget why he got mad at them. Yeah, they didn't pay. There's some like he had some fight with him and he's like, I'm just gonna buy some stock, and they bought enough stock that he controlled the company. Yeah, and then he's like, well, all right, I'm gonna take the treasury of this company and start making investments with him.
And then like he became brick Sure Athora.
Well, I don't know if I find it surprising or not that there haven't been more high profile successful Berkshire Hathaway types. I mean, we just talked about Brad Jacobs, for example, who's pretty well known, and I don't know, maybe Blackman will be the next Berkshire Hathaways.
Yeah, I will say that, like Warren Buffett was kind of early runing hedge fund and in the nineties and certainly the two thousands and tens, and twenty twenties, if you were like good at making investment decisions, the idea that you would like take over a public company and invest that treasury and pay yourself, you know, one hundred thousand dollars a year is Buffett sort of nominally gets paid at Berkshire and like get all of your returns
from the increase in the fundamental value of the company. Like people found a better model. Yeah, you can run hedge fund you charge two and twenty and like you can you know, make more exotic investments and you know, have maybe a better ties treatment and like get paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year. So the idea of people like wanting to follow exactly the Buffet path, like that kind of attenuated, and like why does ackman
want to do it? Like some of it is just like he's made enough money and it's like sort of like a legacy slash, you know, experimentation kind of.
Yeah, I don't know the man obviously not well, it just feels like he wants to be in control of some publicly traded entity. I don't know.
I think that's right. I think that like he's had a good run as being a guy who is mainly a manager of private hedsphones and there's made a lot of money doing it, and now it's like this is somehow more of a satisfying public facing thing. Yeah.
I mean it's hard to understand not being incentivized necessarily by money.
But I suppose when you have you get to appoint man. Yeah, I feel like I'm sure the money.
In this, like he'll be fine. Yeah, all right, Matt, we decided on this topic, Yeah, pretty much. So I'm a little bit unprepared, but I'm so excited to hear you tell me about it.
Info Wars. We tied once about info Wars before we did, when the Onion was going to buy them, or rather they wanted to Global Tetra Heton was going to buy them. So Global Tetra Heaton, which is like the trade name of the Onion, was going to buy info Wars out
of bankruptcy. It's like Alex Jones, the Info Wars guy, is in bankruptcy because he has spread conspiracy theories and hoaxes about the Sandy Hook Elementary School of massacre, and the families of the victims suit him and got like a billion dollars of judgments and so now he's in bankruptcy because he doesn't have a billion dollars and his main asset is info Wars has like you know, YouTube platform, and the bankruptcy court has been trying to sell that
to raise money to give to these essentially Santay Hook victim families. And we talked about it because the Onion had bid to buy it, and the idea is that the Onion would like a little bit of cash for it, but mostly they would run it on behalf of the Sandiog families essentially both economically and also like to not
promote right wing conspiracy theories but to instead promote gun control. Yeah, so that fell through for what I thought were kind of technical administrative reasons, but like it seems to have really fallen through. When we talked about it, I was like, yeah, the Onion can just come back and bid again, but didn't seem to work out that way. So now like the only bidders are Alex Jones himself in a fake mustache,
you know. Yeah, there's a thing called Fuak that's basically like some backer of Alex Jones will give him money to buy his company back. And this thing called wow dot Ai that's like a Puerto Rican artificial intelligence. It was like some sort of thing, you know. But its bid is some cash and a meme coin. It has launched a meme coin called wars that it wants to use to pay for in four warst and the idea is that it has like this mean coin all meme coins.
It's like they issue like ten percent of the meme coin and they're like, we've reserved fifty percent for some weird purpose. So this one, they preserve fifty one percent for the bankruptcy state. They're going to give it to
the bankruptcy estate. It's going to be part of their bid. Yeah, so like the credit Basically, Sandy Hook families will end up owning this meme coin and they would buy the side, and then the holders of the mean coin could vote on what they would do with the side with I guess the choices be like let Alex Jones run it, or like let the onion run it. Yeah, And that's their bid and that's the plan.
So you seem to write that this is pretty clever.
You got to read the whole sentence. Who says you know how much I hate to say this because I hate meme couns. Yeah, And the thing that is happening here at its core is like someone thought, hey, it would be good to like pre sell stock in in forest, Like would we get to try to buy it for worse and like raise the money to do it from the public, and like that would give us the money to do it, and then the public can have a say and how we run info Wars. But you can't
do that because like there are securities laws. But now there are no securities laws as long as you call it a token. And so what they have done here is they've pre sold stock in like their new info Wars company and call it a meme coin. And it
has some like very clever properties. Right, you can create a dynamic where people are going to bid up the price because some people want it to be run one way, people wanted to run another way, and so there's some auction dynamic where people will pay more to get the
outcome they want. And you've sold like a relatively small number of the tokens, and you've reserved a large number of the tokens, so you can say, oh, the fully diluted value of this thing is very large because like the small number of tokens trade trade it like a relatively high price, and so it's you know, it's not like trump coin, but you know, I look this morning and like the fully diluted value is like twenty three million dollars, which is like implies eleven million dollars for
the Sandy Hook victims, which is more than they'd get from wuck. It's not necessarily a real value, right, because it's like it's a thinly traded meme coin there, Like the main thing about meme coins is like their value disappears over night. Let's still so like it creates like a lot of paper value, and it creates it in a somewhat clever way, and it just gets around the securities laws because everyone's decided securities laws don't apply to
crypto anymore. Yeah, so it's clever, but not in a way that like I like.
Yeah, yeah, like got to give it to them, But do you have to you do kind of kind of have to give it to them? A question that I have a statement, So explain this to me one more time. So the bid is for three point five million dollars in cash plus fifty one percent of the total maximum supply of the War's meme coin, So info Wars would control the meme coin, and then the remaining the mean crain is.
Like I think like ten percent of the meme clign has been like just sold. Yeah, it's like issued to the public, and you can trade it, right, right, So that creates a price, right right, Like there's trading. Anyone
who wants to can own it. Creates a price. They can you know, in theory, vote on whatever they if they end up buying info Wars, then the holders of the token can vote, so like ten percent or so is public, and then like some percentage of it has been reserved for like the guy doing this right wowed out AI the company, right, and then fifty one percent
has been reserved for the bid. The bid would be in exchange for info Wars will give the bankruptcy a state three point five million dollars in cash and fifty one percent of this token. And then the bankruptcy state meaning the creditors meaning the Sandiak parents would get those tokens, and there's like some lock up on how one that could sell them. Okay, but the idea is like the bankruptcy state the creditors would let's say share in the
economics of future info wars by owning this meme coin. Now, when I say share in the economics, I'm like rolling my eyes because.
That actually said that with a completely straight faced.
On the inside. Yeah, you can't see me rolling my eyes, and neither conm kiddie. But the whole thing about meme coins is that a meme coin is like it's like linked to the value of this being, but like not
through any methods. Right, It's just like, yeah, maybe it is, right, Like, it's just like if people feel like it's linked to the value of the meme, then it's linked to the value of the meme, but it has no like ownership of the meme, right, And so like here that meme coin is not It does not entitle you to cash flows from intro wars. It's just like a meme coin. That's the thing. It's like a weird kind of stock that doesn't convey ownership.
I was going to say, this coin or token or whatever we're calling it has clearer fundamentals than most anything else, yes.
But still no fundamentals. Yeah, I agree with you, clearer fundamentals than most mime points, but still not Yeah.
You would have an easier time building a case for why this has fundamentals though, then yeah.
Because it gives you voting rights over a thing that you care about. Yeah right, Like, I mean, you don't have to care about it, but like the people trading it probably care about it.
Right.
It gives you voting rights about what will happen with this like culturally salient and controversial property. Right, So it does have fundamentals, but it doesn't have cash flows. And so they can say with a somewhat straight face, it's not stock, it's not a security. It's not an investment. By the way, if like their bid fails, it just goes away. Yeah, that's nothing happens.
I was just gonna ask, So, if you care about this, you would buy this coin now in hopes of having voting rights in the future. If this doesn't work, then it doesn't work. He's well, you tried. Yeah, that's interesting.
It's not like you know, you would imagine doing this like ten years ago, going to an investment bank and trying to build a structure that allowed you to like prefund your bit and where it's like yo, you put the money in escro and then like you give it back if the bid fails, like, there's not I here. It's just like a mean point. If it fails, it goes to zero. It doesn't matter.
How do you think the bankruptcy judge is reading this?
I assume he's rolling his eye on the inside too. I don't really know. I don't understand the process there, because he's sort of like giving up on doing an option. But uh, the mean cooin guy said to I think the Wall Street Journal. He said, like, I put in a three point five million dollar cash component to the bed, which is was what Fuak offered at one point. Is I put in that cash component so that people would like,
would take me seriously? Yeah, because like I think if you just showed up bidding a meme coin, people would not take you seriously at all. And I don't think that.
Would you still have written about it.
I don't know that I would have taken it seriously.
Wow, there you haven't.
But right, I don't know how the tanks is gonna take it whatever rot on Thursday, Like this is gonna be a thing, right, Like I feel so stupid saying this, but like this is a good financing mechanism for this situation, right, for like the situation where you're like bidding in bankruptcy and you don't know if you're gonna win, and you're bidding for a relatively small, controversial online like right wing memi property using a meme coin to fund that, Like
it's like it's like fit for purpose. Yeah, and so you probably are gonna see like a ton of situations where that applies. For this will be the last one.
It's bread new world.
You know, like the Red Lobster bankruptcy. Someone could have come in with a meme coin, like you know, like it's a thing.
Not if only if they had been able to hold out for another year, shrimp shrimped to death.
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