Crypto native since the early days. Went all in on DeFi summer. Tripled down on NFTs before it became big. No paid promos. Not financial advice. I talk my book.
4 subscribers
Sep 14 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
ETH at $300B market cap is maybe the most overvalued financial asset in the world. You have the team and founders rage dumping. There’s no real use for it as it costs next to nothing to send a tx. It flipped back to inflationary. And it’s own L2 betas have canibalized any demand.
This really shouldn’t be a controversial take. Ethereum is a fantastic smart contract pioneer. I’m talking about the valuation of the utility token. I can’t think of any other asset in the world that’s valued at $300B with fees in such rapid decline with no real plan to fix this.
Mar 5 • 4 tweets • 9 min read
(1/4)
Last week I asked if my audience wants tech stock alpha and the response was very positive. So here’s favorite play, $BLND. And it’s one that you can buy at a significant discount to what goat VC Joe Lonsdale paid. At a 60% discount to the dogwifhat meme coin, we like Blend Labs
Now why would real world chads like @jtlonsdale @jerrychen @saammotamedi be on the tl about what looks like just an ordinary small cap busted IPO SaaS company? Well that piqued my interest. Because ultimately stocks are no different than crypto. They’re narrative driven. Stocks are also my wheelhouse.
Blend Labs has deep roots in Silicon Valley. It’s backed by literally the who’s who of tech investors, including Peter Thiel, 8VC, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, General Atlantic and more.I The company was founded by a few early Palantir bros, including Erin Collard who worked with Thiel at Clarium Capital and was a very key player there making the firm a ton of money (thanks for the background story there @wotnaut).
Long story short, they’re all friends with Elon Musk, and part of the legendary PayPal Mafia that’s known to take care of its own.
It's worth noting that Erin Collard is still on the Blend Labs board of directors. And so is Tim Mayopoulos, who's a real mover and shaker that was former President of the company before being hand picked by the Federal Reserve to head Silicon Valley Bank following its collapse. He's an under mentioned power player. And in banking it's all about who you know.
The current CEO Nima Ghamsari was also one of the original founders and has that Palantir pedigree. He has a great story as a first generation immigrant from war torn Iran that worked his way through college playing poker. Well spoken and extremely sharp guy that’s devoted most of his professional life to building Blend Labs. This isn’t a startup. Nima has been grinding away on it since 2012. Through multiple boom and bust periods.
But Blend Labs only went public in 2021. The peak of the post pandemic housing market. It launched as an IPO at a $4.4b valuation. Most thought it would be up only from there. Certainly that was the anticipation as CEO @nghamsari was even awarded a stock option package similar to Elon with executions into the tens of billions of dollars level for the stock, which now sits at a $600m FDV leaving the options way out of the money.
Nima was so bullish on the prospects of the stock, that he even took a loan and leveraged his own equity in the company to get more shares. And as rates rose and the mortgage market ground to a halt, the stock fell dramatically. Reaching levels over 90% lower than the IPO only a couple years prior.
This forced Nima to liquidate shares at the absolute bottom to cover payments on the loan. This was all disclosed in filings and also in a heartfelt post on the company blog regretting the situation.
(2/4)
But here we are. This is the generational wealth opportunity I’m always on the lookout for. I say this because there’s no fundamental problem with the company. The balance sheet is quite conservative. In fact, a large portion of the debt was recently repaid, leaving only $135m outstanding and the term loan was extended at the same time by the lender until the back half of 2027. Lenders have more information than anybody and that's a vote of confidence right there to extend the loan. The balance sheet is manageable as it currently has cash in excess of the debt and has guided to cash flow positive by 2026. Well before the loan becomes due.
Obviously with $BLND in free fall mode like it was last year, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water. And the street starts to lump everything together. Including ridiculous SPACS that warrant valuation melt downs. But this was never a SPAC. It’s a 12 year old tech company with pretty essential software that has raised multiple private rounds well into the billions of dollars in valuation. Retail can now buy this for a fraction of the price thanks to the general misapprehension.
The final private round for Blend Labs was the Series G at a $3.3B valuation in 2020, during peak covid fear. And the current valuation is discounted by 80% to that round. So this is one of those rare occasions that the little guy can get a substantially better entry than the smartest and wealthiest investors in the world. In this case General Atlantic Partners, which led that round and is still holding.
There was some very under appreciated alpha last week when Joe Lonsdale posted that he just had dinner with Nima the night before and reiterating his bullishness and positive outlook on the company. Joe was a Palantir bro as well. He’s also one of the most well respected VCs in Silicon Valley. Presumably he met up with Nima at the Upfront VC Summit in Los Angeles where he was speaking to a packed house.
Generally speaking, I think we’re starting to see a rotation out of big tech into smaller cap Russell Index type plays. Funds will be looking to increase exposure to these higher beta names and looking for quality at the same time. Which isn’t easy as much of the small cap tech space is full of garbage spacs and that bubble rightfully popped and will never come back. So Blend Labs is well positioned in this respect. It has the pedigree of a mid to large cap tech (which it was expected to be) but sold off so much due to macro events out of its control that it’s now a small cap tech bargain ripe for the picking.
Certainly we’ve seen the funds starting to accumulate the stock during Q4. These reports are delayed, but as of the February 15 filing deadline for Q4 holdings, you can clearly see the institutions starting to ease into positions. They trade with algos however, and as volumes are relatively low as with most small cap stocks, it’s a process to accumulate a meaningful amount of shares. But the tide is turning. And the stock is still down about 85% from IPO, so it’s a nascent opportunity for those that aren’t trading quarters and have a reasonable outlook and time frame for the story to play out. Because it will.
Feb 16, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Time for a thread👇
I’ve taken a few weeks off from 24/7 content creation. Unlike most “influencers” (I hate that word), I put serious effort into my Tweets, Spaces, and Discord. I don’t just guess at things, I do an insane amount of research. And for free. Unlike paid Discords.
What’s so ironic to me is I’m being thrown under the bus by some of the same people (some with paid Discords) that I have months of message history with where they thank me repeatedly for helping them make a ton of money in NFTs, and even DeFi.
Nov 4, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Thread about the NFT market👇
The NFT market isn't weak because ETH is surging. It surged back in March and April, and the NFT market had an epic bull run during those months.
What's happening is that there's just so much supply, and most of it is simply low effort cash grabs.
We saw the same dynamic with the ICO market in 2017. ICOs were pretty effective early on. Ethereum being the prime example. Binance followed the next year. Other big ones too that are still meaningful players in the crypto space.
I think in the next few days, @Gfunkera86 will probably announce something formal about DAOs. I know he's working with a top law firm to properly establish the Founder's DAO, Planetary DAOs, UPDAO and the PVDAO. A critical process.
Once this is done, technological governance solutions like Snapshot may be added to the Founder's DAO. This includes a voting protocol. Each token is a vote. As a major Founder's DAO token holder, I plan to propose some things that I believe will be to the benefit of DAO members.
@punkscomic Issue #1
- Genesis NFT of Pixel Vault
- Digital comic + physical w/ certificate of authenticity and collectors case. Shipped free worldwide
- Can be burned for @MetaHero_ MoonDAO token
- Stake comic to earn 50% of $PUNKS tokens
More👇
- $PUNKS token is fractional ownership of the 16 CryptoPunks found on PunksComic.com, which are the inspiration of the comic characters (and now MetaHero).
- Also, 100% of both Merch profits (big news on this soon), and 100% of SuperRare profits will go to $PUNKS reserve
Jun 15, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Time for a thread 👇
$PUNKS has 100M tokens, 25M are in the Founder's Vault DAO and 25M are owned by @pixelvault_. These are considered non-circulating supply.
The only way to get $PUNKS is to STAKE Issue #1 of the PUNKS Comic (sold out). I estimate that 2000-3000 will stake.👇
Why will only 2000-3000 comics be staked?
Most have indicated that they will burn, plus I have about 1500 that will be burned. The distribution was as fair as can be, there's no whales other than the diamond handed @dingalingts who I bet will burn for Founder's Vault DAO tokens.
