Why? FTX’s biggest asset as of Thursday was $2.2bn worth of a cryptocurrency called Serum. Serum’s total market value was $88m on Sat, acc to CryptoCompare. Personally I doubt 10cent on $ will be returned to creditors in some years.
Bankman-Fried personally seems to own shares in Robinhood.
Some value there to be recovered for FTX creditors in a lengthy court process but by now it’s obvious the guy used FTX funds to finance his personal holdings.
Given how young this unregulated space is: (a) assume more „FTX issues“ to come to light soon; (b) expect most retailers wanting to liquidate their coins (if they even can) to buy safe $ bills 💵 (oh the irony); which (c) pushes all coins (much) lower in coming weeks.
If an exchange goes bust, its users’ „digital assets“ (funny name I know) will go into the bankruptcy estate that lawyers & advisors divvy up: Creditor rankings for payouts means „customers“ come last. Watch & learn with laser eyes…!
The only thing that matters for any asset when trust vanishes is liquidity. For an exchange however, it always was the only thing that mattered. An exchange going bust & lawyers taking over for years is the mother of “self-feeding” coin value destructions.
In a bankruptcy process, the administrator is by definition a destress seller which makes it hard to recover fair value even for the best trophy assets.
Now take a look at the asset & liability table of FTX…
The list divided assets into liquid, less liquid & illiquid.
SRM (Serum) is the largest single asset at $2.2bn valued. We don’t have ownership no but SRM is distressed (-27% as I write this) with a total market cap of $67m for 100% of tokens. Assume nil value!
Again, we don’t know how many Alameda owned but at least there seems a $5bn market cap left, although that is falling quickly…I suspect some value is recoverable here but never the quoted $900m. Perhaps $50-100m ?
Next: FTT was FTX/Alameda’s own token: a zero buy definition - not $550m - although the market hasn’t fully priced that yet (market cap still $230m for 100% tokens).
Following a one-off payment in Dec of 8.3% of the annual household bill for gas, Germany will cap consumer prices for gas for households at €120/MWh for 80% of their usual consumption. Beyond that, consumers/SMEs will pay the wholesale (future) price for any additional gas.
2/n
1M forward TTF (EU wholesale natgas hub price) surged as high as €313/MWh in Aug 2022 (hight of NS1 sabotage panic) and are now €114/MWh (€33/MMBtu).
However, as GER still gets some gas under long-term contracts, actual IMPORT prices are a better proxy for pain to come.
The Great Rotation: With the invastion of Ukraine, VVP decided to use gas as a weapon & cut pipeline flows into Europe.
In return, Europe maxed out LNG terminal capacities & contracted every available free LNG cargo globally to compensate the collapse of Russian flows.
2/n
Europe was able to attract LNG by being the best business globally.
How? By offering the highest prices. A cargo owner such as Trafigura or Total which bought LNG at Cheniere in US for $4.1/MMBtu + $3 gasification fee in Jan 2022 booked a pre-shipping profit of $21/MMBtu.
Why has TTF collapsed? Is Europe out of the woods? What matters for commodity price formations? What will matter in 2023...?
1/n
European gas prices - both TTF & NBP - have collapsed right into the start of the winter season, down from its peak of €338/MWh post Nord Stream 1 sabotage news to now €63/MWh.
Mind you though, TTF was €13/MWh 2 years prior - up still 370%.
2/n
Why is TTF lower?
Because natgas can only be consumed or stored. If storage is (95%) full & not consumed (mild weather), prices have to do the work to keep system balanced as comdties trade in present (d-s), unlike equities/bonds which discount future.