The Best One Yet - 🔥 “FyreFestCoin” — Squid Game’s crypto plunge. Under Armour’s surge. Zillow ends iBuying.

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Squid Game… the cryptocurrency. It’s a new coin and a new scam that’s basically the Fyre Fest of crypto because it surged 40,000% and then fell 40,000%. Under Armour jumped 14% because it’s finally brushed off its Bargain Store Blemish. And Zillow stock plummeted because ya simply can’t scale a house.$UA $RL $ZGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewformLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is Snacks Daily. It is Wednesday, November 3rd. This pod, Nick, I'm telling you, it's the best one. This is actually the best lineup we've ever done. By the way, you want to tell everyone about that podcast you found a few minutes ago? Oh, the United States Postal Service now is a podcast.

The USPS has a podcast. I guess if you're delivering all that mail, you've got to be listening to something. It's like, you know what? Cancel the podcast, just deliver on time. Please. Unless Newman's on the show. Then I'll listen. Newman. For our first story, Squidcoin was a scam. A squid game cryptocurrency surged 40,000

but then it fell 40,000 percent. For our second story, Under Armour stock just surged by 14%. They protected this house and they brushed off their bargain store blemish. For our third and final story, Zilla just plummeted 20% because they are ending their eye buying program. Yeah, now Zillow has 18,000 homes. It is desperate to sell Jack. If you find out, Zillow is selling a house, undercut their price. What do I got to do to get you into this condo, my friend? With Snackers, before you hit that wonderful mix. Honestly, Jack, this is my favorite mix we've ever done.

One out of every eight Americans has student debt. Yeah, and millennials are the most likely to have that debt. Gen Xers, you tend to have the most debt on average. Well, one millennial in California named Dylan found a wild way to deal with his student loans, and he told Mel magazine about it. Now, he's not just going to focus on making more money or doing. Doing fewer lattes or doing ramen noodles. No.

His solution is Six Flags, the theme park. It's Six Flags theme park. That's the solution to student debt, apparently. Snackers, Dylan bought a $150, $6 Flags annual pass. Which is fantastic because that Six Flags annual pass gives him free parking, gives him unlimited roller coaster rides, and gives him two free square meals a day. Dylan didn't just stop into Six Flags. He ate every meal.

Each meal. Every day at Six Flags. All day. For seven years. Seven straight years. His wife made him cheat on Six Flags sometimes, Jack, because, you know, you got to have the roasted chicken dinner at home occasionally. On Sunday night. But he had over 2,000 meals at Six Flags and he only paid, you know, for the annual pass over seven years.

Can you read the menu off to us because my arteries, they're a clogged and are curious. It was limited. He could have French fries, pizza, French fries, burger, or French fries. And I'll take the side of fries. Six Flags cuisine goes down easy. But it also comes up easy. after your third loop-the-loop roller coaster. This guy's a roller coaster tycoon at this point.

He saved so much money on his Six Flags diet that he was able to pay off his student loans and then so. Oh, yeah, Dylan went a step further. He bought a house and he got married because he was crushing fries four nights a day. Now, on the one hand, Dylan showed impressive discipline and he has an impressively resilient stomach. On the other hand, Jack, it's pretty messed up

that it takes seven years of six-flag meals to pay off your student debt. Let's enter three stories. Beyond the fries, man. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The snacks about to hear ain't food. It's air candy.

They don't reflect the views of the Robberhood family. It's all informational just so. We're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robahood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC.

For our first story, an apparent Squid Game coin scam reveals the dangers of unregulated cryptocurrencies. Because crypto still hasn't had its 1934 moment. Okay, number one show in the world still, although Jack and I'm only on episode seven. I actually have on episode eight. I got one more episode. Well, Squid Game has its own Roblox video game spin on. No spoilers. It has its own costume for Halloween.

It has its own t-shirts that are sold out at Walmart. Squid Game the lighter. Squid game the fireworks. Squid game the chainsaw. But Squid Game, the cryptocurrency? Interesting. I'm assuming this was blessed by the good people over at Netflix. Man, they are really good at product placement these days, Jack. Squid is a digital token that does exist. Yes. But Netflix has nothing to do with it. No, this is a real cryptocurrency squid. And it was created by a bunch of random developers, just, you know, a quick nine days after the show debuted when we were on episode one.

And they priced it at one cent per coin. You got to start small, Jack. But then the coin started mooning, going from pennies each to nearly three. $3,000 on Monday. Yeah. Squid coin was driven up by some Squid Game hype, some social media accounts, and like a dash of FOMO. So after the stock was up by like 40,000 percent. No joke, like 40,000. On Monday, those random developers we referred to, they ended it. They placed a massive sell order which crushed the price and they walked away with $3.3 million.

That's right. Snackers, the developers of this Squid game cryptocurrency got away with real U.S. dollars worth millions of real U.S. dollars. The victims of this apparent scam walked away with Squid, which is a now worthless digital coin priced at seven hundredths of a cent. For those of you keeping track, that is 0.0007 the number. Dollars. Of dollars. Seven one hundredths of a penny.

It's hard to like understand because they don't put commas after decimals. They should. You know what I mean? What we should point out here is this is also ironically kind of like the plot of squid game, Right, Jack? Yeah, the creators of this thing played God, and the players of this thing got crushed. This is the fire fest of coins. You thought you were going to see Blink 182 and a bunch of hookups?

You did, Dillie. And you got a cheese and lettuce sandwich. Where's my money, Jiro? Where's my money? So the squid scam can make crypto seem like the Wild West, a lawless place where anyone can do anything. Which is also ironically like the whole plot of the Squid Game TV show. Well, according to coin market cap, there were 30 new digital coins. created out of thin air in just the past 13 hours.

Sit down, stand up and sit back down again. Snackers, 30 new digital coins are created every single 13 hours. They're coming out of everywhere. Anyone can create one. And if a new coin catches the right meme at the right moment, it can start to take off. Yeah. So we've seen articles and posts about this squid coin and they did not say not affiliated with Netflix. There's no rule that made them do that. We went to the website to check out Squidcoin. And it's full of errors and broken English.

Clearly it wasn't legit. And the website for Squidcoin listed the founders with legit sounding resumes. But a quick fact check of those resumes shows that those people were completely made out. On the other hand, this is a completely different situation when it comes to stocks, which are heavily regulated by the SEC. The way that Squidcoin was marketed would be completely illegal and uncalled for for the stock market. Pinterest stock can't do this because companies can't list their stock publicly without a ton of information and disclosures to inform investors like us.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Squid GameCoin? Crypto hasn't had its 1934 moment yet. 1934. That is the year when stocks got majorly regulated 87 years ago. It was triggered by the great stock market crash of 1929. The worst. Which triggered the Great Depression. All caps, these words, by the way. These are all proper nouns.

And that's when FDR wanted to clean up Wall Street. And that's when we got the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which is still in effect on Wall Street to this day. For crypto, though, it's not even clear right now who has the authority to regulate. Yeah, the head of the SEC wants to regulate crypto, but the head of the CFTC also says he would regulate crypto if he was allowed to. Coinbase, which is a big crypto trading platform that I peoed this year, they want a new agency to be responsible for crypto. And Jack, Andresen Horowitz, the big crypto venture capital firm, has proposed regulations. that they're sending to D.C. to hopefully get some regulation of crypto. The ball is in Congress's court.

Yep. And we're going to see when crypto gets its 1934 moment. For our second story, Under Armour Stock just searched 14%. There you go. They beat the discounting death spiral. But can they conquer the blemish of bargains? And move on to the lollipop fountain. And then I went through the forest of whirly-tworily, Dom drops. Snackers, Under Armour, they didn't just protect this house. They just hosted a house party.

They just announced that last quarter sales rose by 14%. Which is great, Jack. Profits nearly triple. Which is honestly, that is greater, Jack. And they boosted their outlook for the holiday season sales to 25% growth. That is the greatest of all three. And it's not just thanks to the comfort economy we find ourselves in. You know, Zoom meeting and your sweatwick and joggers. You've been doing that. You did that. You bought the joggers. It wasn't just that. Under Armour has any The discounting death spiral of death. There we go. Snackers, no more waiting for Under Armour to, like, discount the sweatpants. They're sticking them to your full price and you've been paying full price.

The CEO proudly said yesterday, they have substantially fewer off-price sales. They've reduced the amount of promotions and they've reduced their markdown activities. Which is a really jargony way of saying, we kept the price high and the people are paying it. I don't know. They're just paying it these days. Now, Under Armour stock is up 71% in the past 12 months. And it's not because they're launching new cool products and fashion. This is what Jack and I find fascinating about the situation.

There's no like new Under Armour equestrian line coming out of clothing. They're selling the same stuff as always just at a higher profit level. And there's a pretty simple way that Under Armour has been able to pull this off. They're flexing their pricing power. Yeah. They're slowly, sneakily increasing prices, hoping we don't notice and hoping that we keep buying. Yeah, they're like Bobby. Last year's $53 cold gear tight t-shirt.

What if we just take the eraser, scratch that off, make a $55 and see if the kids pay for it? They're still paying for it. Guess what? Ralph Lauren's been doing the same thing with their famous polo shirts. Ralph, he's been creeping up the prices on us. For 18 straight quarters, Ralph Lauren has managed to raise the average price of the clothing that they sell and it's working. So Ralph Lauren and Under Arm are two completely different drawers in your closet have both managed to beat the discounting death spiral of death. Now, you might be thinking, thanks, Captain, obvious.

If you're a company, you should raise prices if you can. Well, it actually requires surprising discipline not to drop prices. Totally. I mean, let's say you got a whole inventory overstocked with polo shirts and sweatwaking gear. You got to get rid of this stuff. Sending those leftovers to T.J. Max at the discount, that is really tempting. It is also the perfect lead-in for our takeaway. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Under Arm?

There's one other move they made. They erased the bargain store black. Yeah, Snackers, it's not just about raising prices on goods. It's critical to change the places where those goods are sold, too. Under Armour sweatshirts were discounted because they were sold at discount stores like Nordstrom Rack. And that can be a stain, a stigma. It can be a blemish on everything about the product and the company. Nordstrom and T.J. Max, they're selling Under Armour products at a lower price.

And so that makes the brand seem lower, too. The gear is discounted, but then so is your perception of what Under Armour stands for. the company, the brand. And that is bad. So Under Armour and Ralph Lauren, they've both been yanking their fashion out of the discount stores like T.J. Max and Nordstrom Rock.

And that is how you erase the bargain store blemish. For our third and final story, Zillow made a huge bet on house flipping and it totally failed. Stock of the real estate icon just fell another 20% yesterday.

Yeah, it did. Zillow, it was, you know, I don't even know why we were saying was. actually, I guess this feels like a sad story. It feels like an obituary. It does. Zillow is a tech platform, although as a shareholder, this is concerning. Yeah, real estate brokers list homes for sale on Zillow.

And then buyers who are scrolling Zillow click the I'm interested button. And then they get a phone call two seconds later from that real estate agent. Classic platform situation. Zillow takes a fee by being the tech middleman to get you that home. Zillow is basically Craigslist. It is. But with a real estate license and better coding. And you know Zillow, you know the other.

brands too. Truly a Zillow, Street EZee, it's a whole family of brands and they got a 2.2 billion views per quarter while you were on your couch scrolling. You were probably viewing by the way. Yeah, you were. You're Zillow swiping on a four bedroom with a kitchen with a marble backslash. One sec, Jack. I'm looking at a Dutch colonial walk in closets. He did bathroom floors. He did bathroom floors, Jack. Can you walk out of those closets? If the floors are heated, I'll just stay in the closet. But Zillow wanted more than just your late night Zillow scrolling. They did, they did. So a couple years ago, they announced Ibuying.

I buying, which Jack, can we give the Silicon Valley translation for all our listeners to eye buying? It's house flipping, but at scale and with technology. And here was Zillow's plan. They were going to buy 7,000 fixer upper homes every single month. And then sell them for a profit after making some tech optimized improvements to those homes. Now, here's the climax to our story.

Because I buying, it became Zillow's largest revenue source, which was thrilling. It never turned a profit once. No, because you got construction problems happening. Fixing up a house requires human labor. It requires hammers and it requires nails. A whole lot of them. And a worker shortage that created a backlog of Zillow owned homes that were not ready to sell right now. Then there was this weird PR drama we covered two months ago on this spot.

Yeah, we did. That was weird. Some random TikToker was hating on eye buyers like Zillow and got bagillions of views on TikTok. He basically accused Zillow of bidding up home prices, which, crowds out regular people from buying homes. Well, on Tuesday, Zillow finally announced in their earnings call, they're done. It is all over. They are shutting down the entire eye buying business. All of it is gone. This is honestly, Jack, we have never, I think, seen a complete reversal of a business model this quickly. Now, Zillow is stuck with 18,000 homes on their books that they bought, and they need to sell each and every one of them. They're panic selling these. Apparently, they're predicting that

they're going to lose up to 7% on every single home they sell. Because they're selling for less than what they bought. Oh, and that's not all. Because of all this, Zillow has to lay off 25% of their workforce. What an utter failure. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Zillow? Real estate probably shouldn't be scaled. Snackers, buying a home, it is often described as the biggest decision in a person's life

after choosing a partner and after having kids. Twice recently, though, we've seen big business try to automate and automate and scale this biggest decision of people's lives. And both times, Jack and I have lived through this, it's ended in failure. About 15 years ago, Wall Street failed with the subprime mortgage crisis. And today, Zillow just failed with Ibuying. Zillow actually blamed their bidding algorithm. That was the problem, they said, because their tech wasn't working out as they planned.

Jack, our favorite line, the CEO then said that buying houses is too risky and too much money to automate in the first place. No kidding. Yeah. You can't techify and scale. every single industry. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? Squidcoin was a scan that got its developers rich, but ripped off a lot of people.

Crypto, it still hasn't had its 1934 moment yet. We're waiting on it, though. Under Armour isn't in as many TJ Maxes, which is bad for you and me, but good for their brand. They bashed the bargain store blemish. Zillow is done with their massive home flipping operation. Because you can't scale every industry, and their CEO basically said that. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Will Beardsy from lovely Lafayette, California.

Back in the day, Southwest Airlines became the largest distributor of alcohol in Texas. 1973, more Little Bloody Mary started being served on board Southwest planes than at any restaurant or bar in the state of Texas. Southwest actually offered a free bottle of booze, one of those little shooters with every seat on the plane. It won Southwest customer loyalty, and they became number one in booze in Texas. It made the friendly skies even friendlier. Snackers, you look fantastic today. If you want to help us grow the pod, there are a couple things. First of all, you can leave a rating and a review right here on Apple or Spotify.

Second of all, you can share this pod with your best buddy who should definitely be snacks. You ask them, H, Y, HY, Y, Y, Y, S day. Have you had your snacks, Dale? If you know, you know, we'll see you tomorrow. Nick and I'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait, man. I accidentally said your line. I feel horrible.

And before we go, happy birthday to stay. Snacker Cole Harris Sims over in Dubai and Felix Claudio in Seattle, Washington. And Diana Way over in Potomac, Maryland. Happy birthday John Osborne in San Jose, California. And Norm and Jamie, happy anniversary down in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. And happy birthday to the legendary Bonnie over in Salem, Massachusetts. Whoever else is celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate those wins.

This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix. Nick Sabley on stock of Zilla. This is Nick. Robin Hood Snacks, newsletters, and podcasts reflect the opinions of only the authors who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and do not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. They are meant for informational purposes only and are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security, cryptocurrency, or investment strategy in any account.

This is not an offer or sale of a security, not a research report, and is not intended to serve as the basis for any investment decision. Any third-party information provided therein does not reflect the views of Robinood Markets, Inc., Robinto Financial LLC, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. All investments involve risk, including loss of principle and past performance, does not guarantee future results. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. Where's my money, Jiro, where's my money?