Posts tagged Reddit
The post-FinTech New American Finance, and Robinhood’s $3.4B support of an 8MM-strong Reddit army that cost Wall Street $7B, with Will Beeson of Bella
The post-FinTech New American Finance, and Robinhood’s $3.4B support of an 8MM-strong Reddit army that cost Wall Street $7B, with Will Beeson of Bella

In this conversation, we talk with Will Beeson of Bella and Rebank, about how the Internet/Reddit/Gamestop broke out financial market structure, the social contract, and what the new American finance structure will look like.

More specifically, we give some thought to which FinTech and Crypto companies win or lose from the GameStop adventure, the actual market structure issues that led to the suspension of Robinhood’s trading, and what’s next for the mobile broker, and finally, the social meaning of the war against hedge funds by Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets. Check out our conversation on these exciting new developments.

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digital investing, narrative zeitgeist, exchanges / cap mktsLex SokolinRobinhood, Reddit, Gamestop
How the Internet/Reddit/GameStop broke our financial market structure, the social contract, and what comes next
How the Internet/Reddit/GameStop broke our financial market structure, the social contract, and what comes next

Despite its best efforts to the contrary, Robinhood did end up stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

Melvin Capital, the $8 billion hedge fund that didn’t find GameStop funny, lost 53% of its portfolio in January ($7 billion) trying to short against the rallying cries of the Reddit Capitalist Union. Gabe Plotkin also faces the embarrassment of having to get bailed out by your old boss.

Speaking of, New York Mets owner and former name-on-the-door of SAC Capital, known most recently for its insider trading fine of $1.8 billion, Steven A. Cohen, put $2.8 billion of capital into Melvin’s fund.

Ken Griffin, owner of the Citadel hedge fund (an investor in Melvin), and Citadel Securities (a massive market maker and buyer-of-order-flow for Robinhood), is seeing capital losses in the former and Washington cries for scrutiny into market structure in regards to the latter.

Robinhood itself — which for goodness sake is *not Wall Street*, but as *Silicon Valley* as it possibly gets — raised $1 billion immediately to protect itself from class action lawsuits, DTCC capital calls, and a now-rapidly-closing IPO window. That means Yuri Milner of DST Global chipping in yet again.

That’s at least 4 people that have had a very bad, no good day.

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digital investing, philosophy, social & communityLex SokolinRobinhood, Gamestop, Reddit, Citadel, Melvin Capital
The absurdity of how the Internet is both beautiful and awful, and the memetic infection of Finance
The absurdity of how the Internet is both beautiful and awful, and the memetic infection of Finance

This week, we get philosophical and look at:

  • Embedded finance and how it will be woven into the fabric of the Internet

  • Applying the philosophies of existentialism, nihilism, and absurdism to Finance

  • Parsing symptoms in decentralized finance (Based Protocol) as artistic protest

  • Finding Dadaist beauty in chaos

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philosophy, decentralized finance, embedded financeLex SokolinQAnon, Nietzsche, Ray Dalio, Albert Camus, Based Protocol, Something Awful, 4chan, Weird Twitter, Reddit, Marcel Duchamp, Dada