Bitcoin and NFTs

[WOM]

What is about real estate projects called The One?

The nice thing about the LA 'The One' is that it's finished. The Toronto 'The One' should have been completed - all 85 floors - by December 2022. To date, they've only poured 40 floors of concrete. And anchor tenant Apple has long since decamped, per its lease agreement.

[ursus arctos]

I spent 45 minutes this afternoon reading about Bridging Finance and Coco Paving.

Hoo boy.

What I haven't yet figured out is if one of the cannabis startups the former funded was the one run by the neer do well brother of one of my partners.

[WOM]

I spent 45 minutes this afternoon reading about Bridging Finance and Coco Paving.

Hoo boy.

Isn't it unbelievable? I can't imagine what level of forensic accountant would be needed to unwind it all. What is does seem to prove is the shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves adage for the Coco kids. The Chinese aren't pleased and have sued the law firm involved in, allegedly, demoting their debt.

[WOM]

Okay, I found the information I wanted.

“As of Aug. 31, the developers had pre-sold 346 units worth collectively $675 million — short almost $200 million of a February 2022 goal. At the time, seventy residential units, all above the 50th floor, remained unsold.”

So, the lower ‘affordable’ condos sold for roughly $2 million each. (They appear to have been listed at $3 million +. The sweet upper floors, the ones hoping to fetch $20 or $30 million (!!!) have languished. But even if you shifted all 70 at a generous $15 million each, this place still doesn’t break even.

[ursus arctos]

Are the lower floor people screwed?

Have they only paid deposits?

In NYC, they would be able to get their deposit back after a shorter delay.

I saw the bit about the Chinese bank. It wasn't clear to me if they were suing the lawyers who acted for the isduer or if they were suing tgeir own lawyers for not making clear to them that they were at the bottom of the pile.

[WOM]

The lower floor people apparently will get their deposits back, but they're only Tarion*-insured up to $20,000 and many may have put down more. There's additional insurance that's been taken out, but it's unclear who it benefits at this point. One article said they'll likely get back $20K, plus whatever fraction other creditors eventually get.

The Chinese bank was apparently illegally demoted by someone on Coco/Mizrahi/Bridging's side. I don't think the Chinese bank's lawyers knew anything about it.

*Ontario builder protection org.


Big question for me: do they finish the building? It's never going to recoup, but surely someone would be happy to take the shell, reconfigure it and make a small fortune. I don't see them completing 85 stories, though. I don't know what the point would be. Clearly the market for $20-$30 million condos at Bloor and Yonge isn't as robust as predicted. This was pure hubris.

Apparently the market rate in Toronto is $1300 a square foot, and the market rate in this neighbourhood is $2400-ish. The One was looking for $3200+. It just makes no sense. For $20 million, you could have one of the nicer mansions in Rosedale or Forest Hill or even The Bridal Path.

[ursus arctos]

Look, if what I saw today was a taste of what Bankman-Fried has to expect on the cross-exam in front of the jury, he’s cooked. He was obviously evading questions, trying to pour forth verbiage to distract Sassoon from what she’d asked. It didn’t work. And as she asked the same questions over and over, he looked worse and worse, trying to wriggle out from answering them. This is to say nothing of the long, repeated sections of “I don’t recall.” Unless he pulls out of testifying, the jury is in for a once-in-a-lifetime shitshow.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/...deleted-signal

[Snake Plissken]

Is it too much to assume that after SBF, WeWork, Musk and many others, the sentiment on Wall Street has turned to telling techbros to fuck off?

[My Name Is Ian]

I know it's not really the point, but lord there's some brilliant writing in that Verge piece.

Defense lawyer Mark Cohen did his best. Unfortunately for him, the cross-examination was conducted by Sassoon, who looks like someone who uses “summer” as a verb, and often appears deceptively timid, with her hands held close to her chest. In her cross, she simply unhinged her jaw and ate Bankman-Fried.

[ursus arctos]

Is it too much to assume that after SBF, WeWork, Musk and many others, the sentiment on Wall Street has turned to telling techbros to fuck off?

"Wall Street" has always been somewhat skeptical, but one has to consider the business model and all those sweet fees they get from doing an IPO without having to take on any of the equity risk (unless the offering is horribly mispriced).

The real issue is the "VC" mindset exemplified by the "All in" muppets and Andriessen's latest "manifesto", who literally live to fund sociopaths.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

ha ha, I absolutely love that 'looks like someone who uses "summer" as a verb'. Took me a while to work out what it meant, but all the sweeter when the penny dropped.

[ursus arctos]

It is quite a common phrase around here, resonating deeply with all of us who first encountered the usage at uni

[ursus arctos]

The whole cross-examination has been remarkable

https://twitter.com/SMTuffy/status/1719055258364629308

[caja-dglh]

Is it too much to assume that after SBF, WeWork, Musk and many others, the sentiment on Wall Street has turned to telling techbros to fuck off?

I think what you will see is a greater apprehension of backing anyone in Silicon Valley in a hostile takeover, rainmaker or not. The rest of this is just gravy and fees to them.

Shocking that the hours of super weird and kinda-sketchy know-it-all podcasts and conferences would come back to haunt SBF. Say you put a load of somethings in a box and then - even if it is worthless - someone thinks the box now has value...

[Hot Pepsi]

The lower floor people apparently will get their deposits back, but they're only Tarion*-insured up to $20,000 and many may have put down more. There's additional insurance that's been taken out, but it's unclear who it benefits at this point. One article said they'll likely get back $20K, plus whatever fraction other creditors eventually get.

The Chinese bank was apparently illegally demoted by someone on Coco/Mizrahi/Bridging's side. I don't think the Chinese bank's lawyers knew anything about it.

*Ontario builder protection org.


Big question for me: do they finish the building? It's never going to recoup, but surely someone would be happy to take the shell, reconfigure it and make a small fortune. I don't see them completing 85 stories, though. I don't know what the point would be. Clearly the market for $20-$30 million condos at Bloor and Yonge isn't as robust as predicted. This was pure hubris.

Apparently the market rate in Toronto is $1300 a square foot, and the market rate in this neighbourhood is $2400-ish. The One was looking for $3200+. It just makes no sense. For $20 million, you could have one of the nicer mansions in Rosedale or Forest Hill or even The Bridal Path.

YouTube keeps wanting to show me videos about how Canada's economy is about to collapse, so there's that.

[ursus arctos]

Must be part of The Hockey Guy's viewership

[ursus arctos]

Another banger from Elizabeth Lopatto

Midway through Sam Bankman-Fried’s cross examination, as prosecutor Danielle Sassoon went through a brutal line of questioning like a hot buzzsaw through a butter cow, I found myself reflecting on how smart the average person is. Maybe they don’t know calculus. Maybe they’ll never read Ulysses. Maybe they can’t code. But they definitely know how to identify bullshit when they see it.

So if you, like Bankman-Fried, have moved into the Clintonian territoryof “it depends on how you define ‘trading’’” you done fucked up, son. Make whatever “sophisticated” argument you like; even the stupid will see through it.

At various points during Sam Bankman-Fried’s cross examination, I saw jurors shake their heads, frown so hard their lips disappeared, and make prolonged eye contact with each other. Personally, I now have a Pavlovian fear response to the phrase “Is it your testimony that…”

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/30/...oss-exam-fraud

[Hot Pepsi]

ha ha, I absolutely love that 'looks like someone who uses "summer" as a verb'. Took me a while to work out what it meant, but all the sweeter when the penny dropped.

I think I used that expression once a while ago. Not "to summer" as a verb. I'm not that kind of person. But I can recall saying "that's the sort of person who uses 'summer' as a verb." In my mind, it means "wealthy, out-of-touch with the problems of most people."

I don't think I've ever actually encountered it in the wild, but I have in print and films.

[ursus arctos]

I think that it had become toxic by the time you were at uni.

I also think that it was never as much of a thing in south of the Mason Dixon Line as it was in New England.

[Hot Pepsi]

I think it's a throwback to a time when anyone who could afford to would leave the city in the summer, at least as often as they could, to be in a place that was not as hot and nasty and smelled less like cooked garbage.

That is, I guess, also the origin story for Tanglewood and various summer Shakespeare festivals or the whole Williamstown thing. The patrons of that kind of culture didn't want to be in the city during the summer.

But air conditioning and modern plumbing make cities more tolerable in the summer than they once were.

And the pace of life and business means that even extremely rich people - perhaps especially extremely rich people - are very busy these days. They are still collecting the surplus value of other people's labor and all of that, but they are not, in general, just lounging around like Tom and Daisy Buchannan and Jordan Baker. They can't just drop their jobs for eight to 12 weeks.

Of course, a lot more people are working remotely from places that were traditionally just for the weekends or vacations, but I don't think that counts as "summering."


That reminds me...when I was a kid, I and almost everyone I knew went to "summer camp" for just a week at a time. Some kids might do multiple such camps - soccer camp, church camp, scout camp, etc. It was relatively close by and usually pretty cheap. The rest of the summer, we hung around town - at the park, the pool, the movie theater, various McJobs, etc and maybe did one or two vacations with the family to the beach or camping or camping by the beach, but those would just be a few days. I thought that's what summer was for and the height of privilege.

But eventually it occurred to me that at the sort of summer camps portrayed in 80's movies, the kids would be there pretty much the whole summer. Or, at least, eight weeks. I knew lots of people who worked at a camp all summer* (both of my parents had done that, which is why they didn't want me to do that), but I didn't know many kids who actually went to camp all summer. That just seemed excessive and extravagant.

And yet, that is a thing.

Or used to be, at least.

I think I read something in the Atlantic or whatever about how those kinds of camps are dying. Nowadays, few parents of means want to send their kids up to the woods to just learn canoeing and archery and friend-making all summer. That won't get them into Princeton.



*One girl I knew growing up worked at one of those all-summer, all-encompassing camps in Vermont. It eventually became a big part of her life and identity. So much so that she got a PhD in parks and rec management and now teaches it. She also met Gwyneth Paltrow there, which says something about how much it cost to send one's kid to a camp for the whole summer.

[caja-dglh]

The full summer camps are a Jewish thing.

"Summering" has always been one of the great tells that the person you are speaking to has a distinctly advantaged start on life over you. See also one quasi-friend who explained she was able to save 80% of her income from working in Media & Entertainment when everyone else was paycheck to paycheck. Turns out that is easier when your rent and stipend comes from a trust fund and you have a sweetheart rent deal from your Aunt.

[ursus arctos]

As I mentioned earlier, it was still very much a part of WASP and Kennedy Catholic culture when I was at uni, and is still going strong on the Vineyard, Nantucket, Coastal Maine, the Adirondacks, even the Hamptons.

Wherever people have compounds.

They just do talk about as much in "public".

[ursus arctos]

The full summer camps are a Jewish thing.

.

Yes, though not exclusively

The Jewish ones evolved out of the Catskill (and similar) resorts where families would spend four weeks or more during the summer.

[Hot Pepsi]

As I mentioned earlier, it was still very much a part of WASP and Kennedy Catholic culture when I was at uni, and is still going strong on the Vineyard, Nantucket, Coastal Maine, the Adirondacks, even the Hamptons.

Wherever people have compounds.

They just do talk about as much in "public".

It's a lot easier for those people to get to and from their compounds from the city than it once was, so I imagine more of them are just going back and forth rather than spending the whole summer there. I don't know if that still counts as "summering."

For example.
https://flytailwind.com/shuttles/


I've been influenced by so many coming-of-age movies about the summer douchebags vs the townies. I always want to be on the side of the townies. If I can help it, I'm never going to move.

[ursus arctos]

SBF Guilty