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THE HEADLINES

 

GUESS WHO’S BACK

Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, bitcoin is back.

The preferred cryptocurrency of eastern European criminal kingpin’s rose 15% yesterday and 35% for the week, touching $13k before dropping back down below $12k.

It’s been a minute since we’ve been lucky enough to watch in bewilderment as the price of blockchain-based currencies skyrocketed seemingly (read: totally) on speculation alone.

But why?

Theories abound as to why Bitcoin has suddenly risen from the ashes, more than doubling the Winklevoss’ fortune in the process.

It certainly didn’t hurt that Facebook recently announced its own crypto, Libra, lending mainstream legitimacy to something that’s shady AF.

Power outage

The eventful day was capped by an outage at Coinbase, the world’s largest crypto exchange. In a classic chicken vs. egg scenario, it is unclear whether or not the outage caused the $1.7k drop in just 15 minutes, or if activity from the drop led to the outage. Coinbase was able to get back online at 5:17 PM, according to Twitter.

 

ALL MY SNEAKERHEADS, GET MONEY!

StockX, a sneaker resale network, has breached the $1B valuation mark and achieved unicorn status with its recent $110M series C funding round. The company announced that it closed a deal on Wednesday led by DST Global, General Atlantic, and GGV Capital.

The sneakerhead stock exchange is part of a more than $2B sneaker resale market in North America, which is growing at more than 10% annually, on pace to reach more than $6B in sales by 2025. That’s a lot of New Balance chunky trainers.

StockX, like most resale websites, charges a seller’s fee. In StockX’s case, that’s a 3% processing fee, along with an 8% to 9.5% transaction fee. Once a pair is sold, it’s sent to StockX to be verified, a major differentiator from its competition, before making it’s way to its final destination, which is likely an upper-middle-class 10th grader blowing his Bar Mitzvah money.

Big shoes to fill

StockX’s recent funding round is no surprise given the influx of investment into, and moves being made by, the fashion resale industry. In February, Foot Locker announced it would be investing $100M in online sneaker resale platform Goat Group and at the end of last year, Farfetch announced its plans to buy Stadium Goods, yet another resale platform.

And that’s just sneakers. The RealReal, a luxury clothing reseller, filed to go public earlier this week with a valuation of $1.5B, while Poshmark, plans to go public as soon as this fall.

 

I BROUGHT YOU INTO THIS WORLD AND I CAN TAKE YOU OUT OF IT

– your mom when she’s so mad she just used your middle name … and Donald Trump to Jerome Powel

DJT continues to throw shade at Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell in what’s shaping up to be one hell of an MTV Celebrity Death Match. Trump not only referred to Powell as “our Fed person” but told Fox News that the US would be better off with Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, leading the FOMC.

POTUS made it abundantly clear that nobody ever heard of Powell before Trump’s appointment. For what it’s worth Powell has been a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since 2013.

And of course, Donny Politics reminded the audience at home that as President, he has the right to demote Jerry Interest Rates … but never suggested he’d take such an action.

You might remember that the Commander in Chief was hoping for a rate cut last week that the Fed didn’t deliver. And the President may not be the only one hoping that Jay and the Feds “take it down a notch” come July.

No pressure

Despite holding interest rates steady during its June meetings, the Fed gave markets the *wink wink nudge nudge* all but guaranteeing cuts over the next year.

And if the rates don’t come to fruition? Economists fear that failure to meet market participant’s expectations of 4 cuts over the next year could result in a 7% drop in the stock market.

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IN OTHER NEWS

• Tesla’s goal of meeting its own aggressive production quotas just got a bit more difficult. Peter Hochholdinger, VP of production at the Fremont, California plant, has chucked up the deuces. He was previously Volkswagen’s production executive and spent three years at Tesla improving the production and cost manufacturing of the Model S, X, and 3.

 

• What a ride for Philadelphia Energy Solutions, which will close its 335k barrel a day refinery next month after it did its best Chernobyl impression last week (too soon?). While fires at refineries are never ideal, this came at a particularly inopportune time as the summer months see higher demand at the pump. Futures jumped 5% on the news, as the largest refinery on the east coast supplied 3% of gasoline demand in the North East.

 

• Cerberus Capital Management is looking to party like it’s 2008. $174M of mortgage bonds backed by home equity loans were sold last week by the FirstKey unit. These loans are “safer” than the ones Ryan Gosling told us about in the Big Short, as a majority of the packaged loans are first to be repaid if the borrower defaults. What could possibly go wrong?

 

• Look out Chad, trouble’s brewing at LaCroix. LaCroix has lost nearly 5 percentage points of market share vs. a year ago, apparently a victim to its own popularity after new competitors entered the space. Turns out, it’s not difficult to mix seltzer water with a “breeze” of apple or a “whisper” of blueberry. The race for second is a tight one between Polar, Bubly, and Perrier.

 

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