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Another worthwhile watch from the SPAC king Chamath https://twitter.com/silvermanjacob/status/1595059806200643589 https://twitter.com/silvermanjacob/status/159

Another worthwhile watch from the SPAC king Chamath https://twitter.com/silvermanjacob/status/1595059806200643589 https://twitter.com/silvermanjacob/status/159505980620064358... It seems insane to me these people dump on retail and their followers and continue to stand up in public.

par 4y ago
Really unfortunate that a lot of crypto was just these rich dudes pumping and dumping, and all getting together to perform rug pulls on a bunch of 'retail investors'.
- consumer451 4y ago
  > 'retail investors'. AKA, bag holders. Towards the end of this last cycle, I even heard a couple of the bag creators use the term openly.
- wefarrell 4y ago
  It should have been regulated from the start. We see this happening every time a new financial instrument comes out and the feds are slow to act.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
pavlov 4y ago
For these people it’s always someone else’s fault. Everything would have worked out if nefarious elites hadn’t interfered, or if some of their followers hadn’t been so weak-willed. But next time it’s going to be perfect. The establishment will be foiled and everybody on our side will have diamond hands. So get in now, be early on the next wave, buy now before everyone else discovers this, etc. Rinse, repeat… SPACs, penny stocks, crypto, MLM pyramids, it’s all the same story.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  The really funny thing is, these guys hang out with and to a large extent are the nefarious elites. But that's sorta unsurprising; It's all based on capture and lock-in and bets on who will win the game of politics. Actual usefulness, financial solvency, and value-creation have limited effect here; Human decency is a direct liability.
trompetenaccoun 4y ago
It's like in any other space. The majority of participants have no idea what goes on and are played for suckers.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
The public is free to invest in SP500. I assume people buying into SPACs were/are hoping that a greater fool comes along and they will not be left holding the bag.
- VLM 4y ago
  Its more like the sector fund argument. If money can move faster than business, weird things happen. On the micro level everyone should invest all their capital in the stock sector that provided the highest returns last decade / year / quarter / day. Nobody never took a class in school that said to list your possible investments and select anything except the highest return, all things being equal. The problem is on the macro level that sector may not be undercapitalized so dumping the entire financial market into whatever won last time, guarantees a bump followed by crash. Carried to an extreme, imagine a stock market so fluid that every penny of capital in our entire civilization flowed all at once every morning at 9am to the company that provided the highest return yesterday, on the assumption that high returns yesterday means high returns tomorrow. It would be epic to watch, but would not be a very functional financial market. Lets say SPACs are a $10B sized market. And they had essentially $0 investment a couple years ago, a very underserved undercapitalized market. The first investor willing to risk it, can pick the best deal in the entire market, and make absolutely insane returns. The problem is the rest of the world financial market sees that insane return percentage and here comes a tsunami of $100T. It's not going to turn out well when that amount of cash impacts a market that's only $10B in size.
pc_edwin 4y ago
Investing, whether in real estate or day trading, is inherently based on asymmetry, leading to an extremely uneven distribution where it can appear as if the smart money just dumped the bag at the top on retail. My concern with your perspective is that it ultimately leads to the conclusion that the only way to prevent these situations is to prohibit retail investors from participating in certain types of investing. This kind of thinking is what has led to modern America, where individuals are unable to invest in their friend's barbershop unless they meet certain net worth requirements or have worked on Wall Street.
paxys 4y ago
Of course they are. Let's not forget though that these same retail investors were the ones crying for deregulation and asking the government to leave them alone as they invested in crypto and SPACs hoping to get rich quick. I have zero sympathy for anyone in the ecosystem.
jgalt212 4y ago
There's a sucker born every minute. -- P. T. Barnum
chrisgd 4y ago
Don’t forget to shame A16Z and Chris Dixon as well. Those guys were complete scumbags around the crypto space

par 4y ago

Really unfortunate that a lot of crypto was just these rich dudes pumping and dumping, and all getting together to perform rug pulls on a bunch of 'retail investors'.

consumer451 4y ago
> 'retail investors'. AKA, bag holders. Towards the end of this last cycle, I even heard a couple of the bag creators use the term openly.
wefarrell 4y ago
It should have been regulated from the start. We see this happening every time a new financial instrument comes out and the feds are slow to act.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

pavlov 4y ago

For these people it’s always someone else’s fault. Everything would have worked out if nefarious elites hadn’t interfered, or if some of their followers hadn’t been so weak-willed. But next time it’s going to be perfect. The establishment will be foiled and everybody on our side will have diamond hands. So get in now, be early on the next wave, buy now before everyone else discovers this, etc. Rinse, repeat… SPACs, penny stocks, crypto, MLM pyramids, it’s all the same story.

GauntletWizard 4y ago
The really funny thing is, these guys hang out with and to a large extent are the nefarious elites. But that's sorta unsurprising; It's all based on capture and lock-in and bets on who will win the game of politics. Actual usefulness, financial solvency, and value-creation have limited effect here; Human decency is a direct liability.

trompetenaccoun 4y ago

It's like in any other space. The majority of participants have no idea what goes on and are played for suckers.

lotsofpulp 4y ago

The public is free to invest in SP500. I assume people buying into SPACs were/are hoping that a greater fool comes along and they will not be left holding the bag.

VLM 4y ago
Its more like the sector fund argument. If money can move faster than business, weird things happen. On the micro level everyone should invest all their capital in the stock sector that provided the highest returns last decade / year / quarter / day. Nobody never took a class in school that said to list your possible investments and select anything except the highest return, all things being equal. The problem is on the macro level that sector may not be undercapitalized so dumping the entire financial market into whatever won last time, guarantees a bump followed by crash. Carried to an extreme, imagine a stock market so fluid that every penny of capital in our entire civilization flowed all at once every morning at 9am to the company that provided the highest return yesterday, on the assumption that high returns yesterday means high returns tomorrow. It would be epic to watch, but would not be a very functional financial market. Lets say SPACs are a $10B sized market. And they had essentially $0 investment a couple years ago, a very underserved undercapitalized market. The first investor willing to risk it, can pick the best deal in the entire market, and make absolutely insane returns. The problem is the rest of the world financial market sees that insane return percentage and here comes a tsunami of $100T. It's not going to turn out well when that amount of cash impacts a market that's only $10B in size.

pc_edwin 4y ago

Investing, whether in real estate or day trading, is inherently based on asymmetry, leading to an extremely uneven distribution where it can appear as if the smart money just dumped the bag at the top on retail. My concern with your perspective is that it ultimately leads to the conclusion that the only way to prevent these situations is to prohibit retail investors from participating in certain types of investing. This kind of thinking is what has led to modern America, where individuals are unable to invest in their friend's barbershop unless they meet certain net worth requirements or have worked on Wall Street.

paxys 4y ago

Of course they are. Let's not forget though that these same retail investors were the ones crying for deregulation and asking the government to leave them alone as they invested in crypto and SPACs hoping to get rich quick. I have zero sympathy for anyone in the ecosystem.

jgalt212 4y ago

There's a sucker born every minute. -- P. T. Barnum

chrisgd 4y ago

Don’t forget to shame A16Z and Chris Dixon as well. Those guys were complete scumbags around the crypto space