The Best One Yet - 👵🏻 “OldCoin” — LeBron’s finding MiMo. Bitcoin’s retirement. LinkedIn’s red-light-green-light.

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

LeBron’s media startup side-hustle just hit a $725M valuation, but then we noticed he pulled the boldest move in investing: “The MiMo.” Bitcoin hit $60K because retirement accounts could be its biggest door to open. And LinkedIn became the final major American social media icon to leave China — It’s a red-light-green-light situation.$BTC $NKE $MSFTGot 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. Welcome back. It is Monday, October 18. Today's Paul. Yes, Jack, where we talk about today. It's the best one, yeah.

It's a T-B-L-Y. By the way, how were the Shishitos? Are you going to tell us about the Shoshitos? I didn't get up. You didn't get it? What? No. Are you kidding me?

All right, pod's over. We got to restart this thing. All right. What's our first story? LeBron's media startup just hit a $725 million dollar valuation. But here's the real story, Snackers. LeBron just pulled a memo. Money in, money in, money out. For our second story, LinkedIn has a job status update they want to announce.

I'm humbled to announce I'm resigning from China for a new opportunity. Onward. I'd like to thank the recruiting team of every other country. For our third and final story, Bitcoin just hit $60,000 per coin on Friday on word that an ETF is coming. But that's Bitcoin. We're more focused on old coin because retirement Bitcoin is the unspoken Bitcoin. Snackers, before we hit that wonderful mix. Wonderful old coin mix of stories. I can't believe you didn't get the Shishito peppers.

This is Hortar's Almanac, week 83. Okay? Week 83, Jack and I have been keeping track of all the things we're running out of during the pandemic. The latest thing we're running out of is the strangest yet. It's a strange thing. It is a fashion mystery. This is a Scooby-Doo meets Louis Vuitton situation. Okay, first, we noticed Vans shoes started disappearing.

But here's the catch. It's not just van's shoes. It was Vans' Slip-on shoes. And not just Van Slippon shoes. White Vans. slip-on shoes. Oh my God, like the kind you have in your hand? Are you kidding me? You kept this as a surprise?

Snackers, according to variety, sales of the white slip-on vans in my hands right now have surged 7,800% in the last month. Ipsop facto Jack is apparently the source of the latest hoarder's almanac entry. Are you kidding me, man? Snackers, we used to buy a thousand of these van shoes per day. Now we're buying 79,000 per day. Literally right before this pod jack, I hit up Zappos, uh, nothing. They're out of nearly every size.

except for 4 and 22 in the white slip on vans. So white slip on vans became the TP of footwear overnight after I bought them because I'm a trendsetter. Jack, that's exactly the situation. But Snackers, here's where things get kind of interesting. Turns out the shortage of white slip on vans isn't because some cargo ship is stuck in the straight of Gibraltar. It's because of Squid Game. Yeah.

Behold Snackers, the costume effect of Squid Game, the Netflix show. Squid Game viewers want to be Squid Game characters for Halloween. They want to be it so bad because every character in Squid Game is stuck in a dystopian hellhole prison competing in life or death. Kids games and Jack, what are they wearing while they're competing? White slip-on vans. But Snackers, Jack and I always have your back. And the best Halloween costume this year, we don't think it's going to be a Squid Game character wearing white slip on van shoes. Everyone's doing it.

Even though I could do that because I have it. Yeah, okay, okay. There we go. Congratulations. The best costume is to go as a white slip on fans shoe. Boom, there is a shortage of those shoes. So here's what we're thinking. Just be the whole human-sized version of the shoe as your costume.

Easy DIY costume. Just get a white sheet and open up a hole. You're not a ghost. You're a white slip on band's shoe. Let's end our three stars. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The snacks are about to hear ain't food.

It's ear candy. They don't reflect the views of the rob of her family. It's all informational just so. You know, we're not recommending any securities. Nope. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale about security. Right. Snacks is digestible.

Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, LeBron James just pulled one of the rarest and boldest moves in startups and investing that we ever see. Very rare. We call it the memo. Money in, money out. Jack, can you whip out the whiteboard and tell us the numbers over here? Four rings.

Yes. Three children. Two huge money moves. One huge man. Infinity flopping. Who we talking about? True, true. LeBron James's media startup snackers. It's called Spring Hill. And it's named for the housing complex in Akron, Ohio he grew up in. And this media startup that LeBron has launched does a lot of things. Like it does unscripted shows. Like the shop on HBO. It also does scripted movies. Like Space Jam. It also does podcasts. Like Needing Doe. Oh, wait. It also does a pair. That cool Megan Rapino hoodie. Oh, wait. It also makes ads for Pepsi. And it does marketing consulting for JPMorgan Chase. Okay, if you add up all that absurd number of revenue streams, you're going to get $100 million in sales last year. And they're on pace. LeBron James Media

startup to do $200 million in sales next year. Did we mention LeBron also plays 82 regular season basketball games and like 30 playoff games every year? This is his side hustle. Yeah. Well, the news here, Spring Hill sold a minority stake to the Boston Red Sox owner, Epic Games, which owns Fortnite, Liverpool FC, and Nike. If so facto, LeBron James' media startup side hustle is now worth $725 million. That's like $120th of a lift. Nick and I were immediately thinking, this is another celebrity-led media startup that does a little bit of everything. Yeah. Hitting a multi-hundred million dollar valuation.

Jack, I'm looking at the list right now. We got Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine. Obama's Higher Ground and Megan Marker's Archwell. And now LeBron's Springwell. All of them are multi-hundred million dollar startups and media. So big fundraise for LeBron off the court. It's a victorious milestone. But guess what?

LeBron's not resting. No, he is it. Get this, Snackers. Jack and I noticed that on the same day that they just raised all that money, LeBron had a surprise second announcement. On the same day, LeBron sold a huge chunk of his media startup. He bought into another risky startup. Classic LeBron, he announced it with a shirtless workout picture because LeBron and his abs are now investors and ambassadors for tonal.

Tonal. You might have heard of it. It's an at-home workout mirror wall thing, but it's got like iron and cords and you could do like peck flies. They're $3,000. It's like a West Elm piece of furniture that drank a whole bunch of protein shakes. The machines priced at $3,000. The company is now worth $1.6 billion. Picture crate and barrel, but it made it with Planet Fitness.

But LeBron's doing something that neither Reese, the Obama's, or Prince Harry are doing. He's Mimo. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over LeBron James is our buddy? What's the takeaway for him? He pulled the rare, elusive, and bold Mimo. Money in, money out. Mimo, money and money out. Snackers, most entrepreneurs, they sell their startup, then they chilt.

They de-risk. They buy a house. You buy a few yachts, maybe even semi-retire with all that cash. But the Mimo, money and money out, is the boldest of entrepreneur moves. This is what LeBron did. He took money out of one risk and then immediately poured it into another risk. So Jack, Jack on the wall, who is the most famous Nemo of all? Okay, this one's insane.

Elon Musk, you know him from Tesla. He was an early co-founder of PayPal and walked away after selling PayPal with $180 million. Then he immediately poured the $100 million into SpaceX, $70 million into Tesla, and $10 million into Solar City, all of his money. So we got $180 million check. an unbelievable success and then put all of it into three risky new startups. He even had to sleep on buddy's couches. We're not saying you should do this and pretty much all of us can't do this.

But when we see a founder go money and money out, we respect the memo. Find the memo. Respect the memo. For our second story, Bitcoin just searched past $60,000 on hopes of Bitcoin ETFs. That'd be an open door that could open another door. on. An older door. Older door. Old coin door. Snackers, big moves coming from the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. Jack, what's the SEC up to? They must approve or deny four applications for new ETFs that would track the price of Bitcoin. And this is a big deal because this would be the first ever

securities linked to Bitcoin. This is like Bitcoin's bat mitzvah. It's coming out. It's going to be great. We don't know how the SEC will rule this week. But they tweeted something last Thursday night. That was quite a hint on how they'll rule. They tweeted before investing in a fund that holds Bitcoin futures contracts, make sure you carefully weigh the potential risks and benefits. They probably wouldn't tweet that unless they were about to approve an ETF that holds Bitcoin futures contracts. I'm not not saying we're going to do it, but I'm not not saying we're not going to do it. All right.

Now, before we talk about that fund anymore, let's talk about crypto's door problem. The door problem, Jack. There are only so many openings into crypto investments, only so many doors. One door to get you into crypto is a retail brokerage account. Yeah, another door to get you into crypto is buying crypto on a crypto trading app. But those two doors are most popular with individuals like Nick and me and you and have for money. The small money out there. On the other hand, the big money managers out there, they use big money investment vehicles,

aka big doors. Big doors. Big doors. And exchange traded funds, also known as ETFs, Those are one of the big doors that big money likes to use to invest. Yeah, some big money managers with big money can only invest in stocks and ETFs, exchange traded funds. They have rules.

So if these Bitcoin ETFs get approved, there will be an ETF that lets the big money invest indirectly in Bitcoin. And here's the thing Snackers, big money keyword big. That brings a lot of big excitement to people. And the prospect of big investors putting money into Bitcoin sent the price of Bitcoin past $60,000 on Friday for the first time since April. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies opening doors over in Bitcoin? Bitcoin's biggest closed door may be retirement accounts.

Snackers, forget Bitcoin. Can we talk about old coin here? Only self-directed retirement accounts are even allowed to do crypto investing these days. That's not all retirement accounts. In fact, it's a very small percentage of retirement accounts that allow crypto. Just three to five percent of all. retirement account money. The rest are traditional retirement accounts, which forbid crypto investments. Get this. That means there's a whopping $23 trillion of 401k in IRA retirement money. That can't invest in crypto even if you wanted it to. Eventually, though, regulators could let a crypto door open for that

$23 trillion to walk into crypto investments. And that means we could see Bitcoin in our 401k and IRA retirement investment menus. The old door of retirement accounts could open. a whole new wave of the crypto market. Bitcoin become an old coin. For our third and final story, the last major U.S. social media company in China. LinkedIn has officially left China. They've quit China.

U.S. companies in China, they're either red light, yellow light, or green light. Jack, and then there was one. Twitter and Facebook have been banned in China since 2009. Yeah, YouTube and Google, banned since 2010. I couldn't even open Gmail when I was in China. Snapchat, Clubhouse, both banned since forever in China. LinkedIn was like the only one remaining on Love Island over there.

And as LinkedIn just put it, it's been quote unquote, a challenging operating environment over the last year. Last year, the Chinese government made 42 requests for LinkedIn to take down posts they didn't like. Yeah, President Xi, not a fan of Tiananmen Square LinkedIn posts. LinkedIn complied with just about every single request. What president she wants, President she gets. This year, China asked LinkedIn to. to block the accounts of journalists reporting on stuff they didn't want them reporting on. Yeah, and LinkedIn complied. It blocked journalists on LinkedIn.

So LinkedIn kind of participating in China censorship. Yeah. A very bad look in free democracies where LinkedIn makes just about all their money. The funny thing, though, here, and there is a funny thing is there is one thing that China loves using LinkedIn for. And this is a true story. They're not fans of social media sites like LinkedIn, we can post whatever you want. But they did use LinkedIn to recruit spies. Snackers, according to the New York Times, apparently people been getting DMs to meet up with like an importer exporter based in Beijing. And a whole bunch of the time that was actually

China trying to recruit you as a spy. Siding bonus, 10,000 yuan. Which leads to the shocking news last week, LinkedIn is exiting China and it came down to moving on its principles-ish. Okay, well, LinkedIn's owned by Microsoft. And LinkedIn brings in $10 billion to Microsoft every year. That's impressive. And China's the number three country for LinkedIn with 54 million registered users, which is a whole bunch of people. That's also very impressive. But China only represents 2% of Microsoft's global revenue. Not that impressive. So betraying their free speech values at Microsoft wasn't worth a tiny little bit of revenue they make there. However, Microsoft can't just like totally let go in this situation. They are keeping something. Yeah, they're launching a

something else. We're calling it LinkedIn light. It's a neutered version of LinkedIn that's basically just a job board and no one's allowed to post anything. So you can apply to jobs just like don't make your job title senior manager of Down with the Communist Party. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at LinkedIn? U.S. companies in China are either green light, yellow light or red light. Snackers, here's your green light selling purely physical goods in China. That's a green light. Yeah. The government is actually pro-consumerism in China and they're not afraid that an American-made car is going to start a political revolution or something. Yeah, so Tiffany's jewelry, Starbucks, they're almost dependent on China for all their growth.

Smartphones in China, that's a yellow light. It is. It is. Apple's iPhone, Google's Android. Their software dominates. China is 20% of Apple's revenues. That's huge. But we say it's yellow light because China's been asking Apple and Google to remove apps more and more frequently because of censorship. And that's making Apple and Google feel uncomfortable. All right. So you got green light, you got yellow light. Finally, you got red light. And social media, that's a red light. in China lately. Open and free sharing of information is strictly forbidden in China. That's why 0% of SNAPs revenues, 0% of Facebook's revenues and 0% of Twitter's revenues are coming from

China. Green light. Red light. That was good. That was good. That was really good. You totally got me too. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us to start the week? LeBron got money in from Spring Hill and money out to tonal. The rare, elusive, bold entrepreneur mima. Money and money out. Their second story, there's no door right now for retirement money to get into crypto. But if the old door opens, that could be a whole new wave for crypto. For a third and final story, LinkedIn said enough is enough. We're shutting down in China. Because physical goods got the green light in China, smartphones got the yellow light,

and social media has a very bright red light. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by John Bernsteel from lovely Louisville, Kentucky. The Nobel Prizes have been announced, and there's a whole bunch of new laureates. celebrating their awards. And honestly, we love the word laureate. It's a great word to say, Jack. Everyone should be a laureate of something.

Turns out, laureate actually has meaning. It comes from ancient Greece. It does, because apparently there was an herb called the laurel that was used in the recent crowns as a symbol of victory when you'd like win an athletic game or a battle in ancient Greece. So they took Laurel, turned it into laureate. It's the symbol of winning the International Science Awards. Ipso facto Nobel Prize laureate.

That's what we get on our LinkedIn's. There's also the poet laureate. But not on your china. at LinkedIn. Snackers, you'll look fantastic to start the week. Jack, any guilt you're feeling about hoarding all these white bands, slip-ons from Squid Game and then selling them on Alibaba to make a cheap buck. I have one pair.

Snackers, he's got a closet full of them. I can see it from here. I can see it. I can see it in this studio. We have to talk about this. All right, everyone, H.Y, HY S.D. We'll see you tomorrow. We got to talk, man.

We got to talk. And before we go, Chau, Martina Montemoro, got her first day full-time on the job in Milano, Italy. Congrats on the promotion and the 30th. birthday to Scott Matler in New York City. And Kaylin Young, happy birthday down in Baltimore. Happy 23rd to Emily U. in New York City. And Kyle Birch, happy birthday in Wichita, Kansas. And Brad Doe in Peoria, Illinois. And Maria down in Baldwin Park, California. Happy birthday to Benny D. in Rockville, Maryland. And Patrick Minnick, congrats on the promotion

to executive over in Pittsburgh. And to anybody else celebrated something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack, Nick owned stock of Apple, and I own some Bitcoin. 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, Inc, 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 on the basis for any investment decision. Any third-party information provided therein does not reflect the views of Robinhood. Goodhood Markets, Inc. Robin Hood Financial LLC, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates.

All investments involve risk, including loss of principal and past performance, does not guarantee future results. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. Fantastic performance. Everyone, Jack had a headache this week. He had a fever over the weekend. He didn't have COVID. I should clarify that, but he wasn't feeling great.

He didn't get his best sleep ever. His child was sick last week. But he came to play all week. long. In his fans slip-off. We had to redo that snack fact at the end. You know, yeah, it happens. This guy came to play.

Dude, this is the other pod. You should just got the best other pot. This is why you're the perfect partner. I can't tell which one I have more fun with when we're doing this or that. Here we go. Three, two.