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Overstock Has Had a Wild Week
- elliotec 7y agoI used to work at Overstock as an engineer. It was a wild ride. This guy is explaining this situation better than any combination of people in that company could ever muster up. Also, AMA, there are plenty of stories.
- 52358 7y agoI did a software engineering internship at Overstock circa 2013-2014, and have a couple interesting stories myself. However while an intern there I heard a story that Patrick Byrne locked a team of engineers in a room and didn't let them out until they implemented bitcoin payments into Overstock. Do you happen to know if this story is true? I remember at the time that made Overstock one of the first bigger mainstream websites to support Bitcoin.
- elliotec 7y agoIt's not precisely true but that story comes from him and it's not too far off. He loved talking about "throwing a bunch of engineers in a room for a couple days and shoving pizza under the door periodically" for that implementation, and they basically did do that, but it was nothing more intense than a normal crunch time overnighter or like a hackathon, and of course they could've gone home if they wanted to. I knew them and most of them were pretty stoked on the project so they kinda wanted to do that anyway, and got a hell of a bonus for it too (and promotions, lots of them).
- aybs 7y agoI'm not even sure where to start asking. What's the first wild story that comes to mind?
- elliotec 7y agoI was pretty good buddies with some of the higher-ups that spent a lot of time with Patrick. One of the craziest stories they told me was when they were partying at his ranch in the mountains with a lot of property. Everyone was drinking and laughing or whatever, I think he estimated a handful people were there, and suddenly Patrick gets a notification on his phone and starts freaking out, saying someone was coming onto the property, specifically one of the "men in black" Feds you hear him refer to. Apparently he had people watching cameras around his property for any "suspicious activity," and there were reasons for him to fear for his life over it. He pushes a button and his house shuts down like one of those movies where metal sheets go over all the windows, code red alarm, and literally a gun room opens up. He grabs a bunch of "Halo-style guns" (source's words) and passes them around to the other people in the room, whispering about hiding and waiting it out or they'll have to fight. Hours went by without more incident other than everyone freaking out for a while and I think they started partying again or passing out. People didn't used to believe me when I told them he was like this!
- oceanghost 7y agoWere you around for the Bing partnership days? If so I have so many questions.
- dwohnitmok 7y agoHow wild was the company overall vs just Byrne?
- Animats 7y agoNew York Post: "Under the dividend plan revealed July 30, a crypto-payment will be awarded to Overstock shareholders of record as of Sept. 23 on tZero, a blockchain-based trading platform operated by an affiliate of Overstock. The dividends, accessible only through a Dinosaur Financial Group brokerage account, aren’t payable until Nov. 15 and cannot be traded for six months afterward — or May 15, at the earliest." Dinosaur Financial Group: "Dinosaur Financial Group is a company of global capital markets experts who operate on the assumption that what you want to do can be done." You can also read the tZero site, but it reads like every other weirdo ICO token company.
- nacs 7y agoOutline / readable: https://outline.com/kr9djp https://outline.com/kr9djp
- reascenda 7y agoJust a heads up that you can get the column free if you subscribe to it as an email newsletter.
- kick 7y ago"Also—totally separate from all of this—Byrne left Overstock unexpectedly last month because he had dated and betrayed a Russian spy and wanted to make sure everybody knew about it." "Really! Warren Buffett is somehow involved! Byrne blogged about it, on his blog, which is called DeepCapture.com." (Quoted from his own blog post:) "The proximate cause of his decision to sell, however, came when we heard over the weekend that starting last Friday, the Deep State’s pets at the SEC began leaking something to their clients JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman (and here as citizens I bet you thought we were their clients, right? lol). They leaked that they were going to Bazoomba our digital dividend. Once that started getting back to me, I realized this: Whenever I have had any question about whether the SEC would or would not do something totally outrageous in order to hurt our company to benefit their clients on Wall Street, they never let me down: they always did the evil thing. So Pettway decided it was time to eject., especially because he knows I need the ammo to go to war against the Deep State." I hope he gets the mental help he needs to get better.
- wyldfire 7y agoI vouched for this because while the post sounds nuts, it's clearly quoted from the article and Byrne himself.
- ColanR 7y ago> I hope he gets the mental help he needs to get better. It does sound weird, but on what basis can you or I claim to be better informed about that situation than he is?
- rmilejczz 7y agoI’m confused by this comment, he can still be better informed than you or I but he’s declaring war on the “deep state” which seems like a fair basis to question his current grasp on reality, no? Forgive me if I misunderstood your comment Edit: is this comment offensive or something? Edit2: yes I get what a deep state “technically” is but this language is still implying a desire to “go to war” with an ill conceived entity. Who is the leader of the deep state? How do you go to war with it? This, to me, sounds like delusion. Edit3: the deep state circle jerk is real on HN apparently. I’m deeply sorry if my wrongspeak upset you, deeply deeply sorry.
- airstrike 7y agoWhat an amazing read... this is absolutely wild. The whole South America angle reminds me of the John McAfee saga... Also, at this rate, we might as well have a bot that automatically submits Matt Levine's column to HN!
- ImprovedSilence 7y agoI subscribe to the email versions of his articles. I highly recommend them, entertaining, informative, and I feel he remains fairly neutral, which is a welcome relief in this day and age.
- davidw 7y agoI like his writing, but there's something about it that's just too time consuming, day to day. Maybe it's my own short attention span.
- function_seven 7y agoIt's your attention span. I have the same impression as you. I don't always read the articles, yet whenever I do "find the time", they're always an entertaining and insightful read. Which means I think I need to work on my own attention span.
- ImprovedSilence 7y agoI’ve tried to cut out all the small nonsense (except HN of course...). And that really leaves time for a small few longer reads a day, and I find it to be much richer consumption overall. But then I’ve got 30+ tabs open that I’ll probs never get to
- davidw 7y agoI could definitely see reading a weekly highlights, just that it's too much for me every day. There's something about the writing style too that feels a bit breezy at times.
- 7y ago
- reviel 7y agowow this was hilarious, great writer
- csar 7y agoMatt Levine is a national treasure and he's at his best here. The WeWork post below is hilarious too but my favorites are when he picks really obscure topics and makes them both understandable and funny while adding some subtle insights.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoMatt Levine is the only reason I have a subscription to Bloomberg. He does great work.
- cpwright 7y agoYou can get Money Stuff emailed to you for free. If they stop that, I will have to break down and get Bloomberg news.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- biztos 7y agoAwesome! However: > The crypto is stored in the place where all crypto is stored: in mathematical mist, behind long keys held only in the memory of someone who is quite good at storing such things in memory (with paper backups in the hands of a priest I met 35 years ago who never sets foot in the West). That could be pretty bad news for the priest, whose identity and whereabouts could surely be ascertained by a sufficiently motivated criminal actor, and it sounds like there are tens of millions of motivational units in play.
- cstejerean 7y agoI’m pretty sure this priest does not exist.
- reaperducer 7y agoPerhaps he means "priest" figuratively. Like how The Keepers of Lists were visually portrayed as monks.
- raintrees 7y agoByrne calls Buffet his Rabbi... Therefore someone else referred to as a Priest seems less far-fetched, to me.
- mirimir 7y agoWhether or not there's a priest, he just might manage this, if he's clever enough. But unless he's been getting seriously technical, that's unlikely.
- ivl 7y ago> I will say that the strategy of declaring a dividend in nontransferable magic beans to hose short sellers is, on its face, too easy. If this works, and if you can do it with the pure goal of messing with short sellers, then lots of companies would do it. I think a fair number of CEOs would love to see this work.
- bduerst 7y agoBasically, Byrnes is looking like a duck, quacking like a duck, and swimming like a duck. I can't see the SEC sitting this one out. How soon until Overstock throws Byrnes under the bus too? They made the decision to make the dividend tradable day 1, after Byrnes left, as more sane leadership took control. Also, Adam Neumann took out a ton of private loans using private We stock as collateral. What happens if the IPO busts?
- tryitnow 7y agoI don't know. I honestly could see an argument that he's just not mentally stable, he may sincerely believe a lot of what he's saying and not trying to manipulate the market. His language and mannerisms remind me of a high functioning paranoid. He also just doesn't strike me as a criminal operator, more of a lunatic. I wonder what impact the mental capacity has on SEC charges?
- mrguyorama 7y agoI don't get how the author claims that removing the trade restriction on these digital shares removes the market manipulation angle. The short squeeze already happened! The market was already manipulated!
- bduerst 7y agoRight? That's precisely why I think the SEC is hiding in the duck blind, watching Byrnes unravel and waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger.
- ansible 7y agoI can understand that Overstock might claim that the market manipulation issue has been resolved by getting rid of the trade restriction. But I don't understand why anyone else would think so too.
- legohead 7y agoCan someone explain why short sellers would bother a CEO? Is it an ego thing, or does it actually hurt the company?
- seanhunter 7y agoVery frequently top executives get substantial portions of discretionary compensation in the form of shares, restricted stock or options. So things which depress the stock price affect them personally. This is said to help create alignment between management and shareholders because management are shareholders. Short sellers have a vested interest in the price going down (they've backed that view with their cash by selling short after all) so their incentives are diametrically opposed to this. Now, does the share price going down hurt a company? Somewhat, in that it's equity is less attractive so hiring people with options etc is going to be more expensive (people will value cash more) as will fundraising. Things like acquisitions become harder and more expensive too. But it honestly doesn't affect the company to the extent that would justify the obsessive attention that some CEOs seem to give it. That all being said the classical view is that short sellers facilitate liquidity in a stock for when people want to buy and overall this should reduce volatility. All of the above is assuming no market manipulation by the short seller (eg spreading malicious falsehoods about a company in an attempt to drive the share price down). This is something that is often alleged, but when you look at CEOs who say this, they frequently have the opposite tendency to positively spin things in order to send the stock price up.
- legohead 7y agoThanks for the explanation!
- SkyMarshal 7y ago>It may give you some comfort to know what I am doing with the capital generated by the sale of my stock: after paying tens of millions in taxes (after all, “We didn’t build that,” right?) by Friday the rest will be in investments that are counter-cyclical to the economy: Gold, silver, and two flavors of crypto. The gold and silver are stored outside of the United States, in Switzerland, and within two weeks, will be scattered in other locations that are even more outside of the reach of the Deep State, but are places that are safe for me. The crypto is stored in the place where all crypto is stored: in mathematical mist, behind long keys held only in the memory of someone who is quite good at storing such things in memory (with paper backups in the hands of a priest I met 35 years ago who never sits foot in the West). He's giving away way too much information here. Maybe it's all false, in which case that's sort of ok, but he really needs to learn how to just STFU.