The Best One Yet - 🦑 “#SquidGame” — Netflix’s squid strategy. Crypto’s physical stores. Undersea Cables’ moment.

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

Squid Game has become a market-moving Netflix show messing with stocks. The latest move in digital cryptocurrencies is physical crypto stores. And a 470-mile undersea electric cable by National Grid is solving the biggest problem of renewable energy: Inconsistency. $NFLX $BTC $ETH $NGGGot 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 Tuesday. Tea Boy Tuesday, October 5th. Here it is. Snackers, today's pod is the best one yet. Yeah, it's a TBOWY.

Jack, what's our first story? What do we got? Do you want to play a game? Yeah, Squid Game. It is the fastest ever show to reach number one globally on Netflix. And it's Korean. For our second story, I'll trade you my wind energy for your water energy. Deal?

You really doing a lot of role play here today, Jack. A new 450-mile undersea cable between Norway and the U.S. The UK does exactly that. Wind for water. For our third and final story, the latest thing in cryptocurrency. This is wild. Is the opposite of crypto. Physical crypto stores are now a thing, people.

We need to talk about this. When you walk in the store, the bell rings and they say, they say, I don't believe I'm here either. This is strange for me too. Honestly, Jack, I don't think anyone else is covering this mix of stories. I've never seen this mix before. There's no way. But Snackers, before we hit those three wonderful stories.

Wonderful mix. Instagram was down. Instagram. It pulled a hammy. It broke yesterday. You're trying to scroll and you're getting ghosted. Jack, I'm watching this video of Susie cakes, of them cutting a chocolate cake, watching them get it gets sliced and then buffering, buffering.

You check back in 10 minutes, same cake, same Susie. There's nothing to scroll. Refresh. Buffering, buffering, no video. This wasn't just Instagram. All of Facebook's apps. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, all down, all day. Even the Facebook Oculus virtual reality headset, it was virtually not.

working in real life. I hope the VR users were doing something cool because their VR goggles were froze for like 10 hours yesterday. Jack, the Facebook situation got so bad that Facebook executives started tweeting on Twitter. And Jack Dorsey was gloating on Twitter. And this comes one day after the 60 minutes episode about the whistleblower. This is pretty serious. We got three billion people who rely on Facebook apps to communicate. You couldn't contact your crazy aunt yesterday. Small businesses rely on Facebook apps. They couldn't take customer orders yesterday. In other news, a record number of phone calls yesterday. We should point that out. And a record number of people actually getting together to chat. Has anyone tried unplugging

Instagram and then plugging it back in? But Snackers, if your thumb isn't flicking past Instagram stories, Facebook's not counting their cash. Yeah, the equation. If Facebook down Zuck frown. So our T-Boy Tuesday question, how much money did Facebook lose in yesterday's epic metaverse outage? Snackers, Jack and I did the calculation down to the dollar two. the minute how much money did Facebook lose in revenue yesterday? Grab your calculator. The answer? Okay, I'm ready for this.

The end of this pod. It's at the end of the pod. It's at the end of the pod. I don't know. What are we going to do? We're going to calculate the lost revenue as of this pod. What's in 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 about the hair ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the robberhood 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 of a security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fembra,

slash SIPC. For our first story, Netflix stock just hit a record high because of one thing and one thing only, because of squid game. Squid game. Netflix's Korea strategy shows their international advantage. Okay, full disclosure here, Jack. I watch. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I survived episode one of Squid Game over the weekend. Nick told me about episode one and he said he's not going to watch anymore because it's too dark. I showed up at Alexa's birthday party, all right? And someone asked me what I've been up to.

I said, you know, I just watched Squid Game episode one. He said, hold on one second. He disappeared for like 20 seconds, came back. He handed me two drinks, not one and said, you're going to need this. Squid Game Snackers is on pace to be the most watched Netflix show. Ever. More than Tiger King, more than the crown, more than orange is the new black. Combined. That's not true. It's not combined. It is number one, though, in 90 countries, which is impressive.

It's so popular. Netflix has been sued by a Korean broadband internet company because it resulted in so much dang streaming. Yeah, literally, Netflix got sued because this show is overburdening an entire country's infrastructure. All right, the show's called Squid Game. It is. Doesn't really have anything to do with Squids. No, it doesn't. This is Truman Show meets Hunger Games. Yes. Meets Quentin Tarantino, kill Bill, bloody, gory violence. With like a dash of Dante's Inferno, as one snacker pointed out.

It is a Tarantino screenplay, but with more blood. It's a dystopia. People desperate with debt on the show agree to play in a contest where they play a bunch of kids games. And they get money if they win and a horrifying death if they lose. And this is the point, Jack, where we should point out this is not a reality show. It's fiction. Although you think at first, oh my, this is a reality TV show. In a way, though, it is somewhat of a reality show because U.S. household debt is at a

record high right now, same situation in Korea. So elements of this horrible show where people are desperate with their debt can be relatable here in an absurd way. But it's not just a show and it's not just a cultural moment. Squid Game is stock market moving. In Korea, Siren Pictures, who Netflix paid to produce. is this movie. Their stock is up 50%. In the United States, Roblox, who is the source of a bunch of video game content, their creators are building experiences of Squid Games in Roblox for gaming. Their stock's up.

But Netflix stock is the showstopper here, and their stock is at a record high too. Now, here's what Jack and I find fascinating about Squid Game. It's not about Squid Game being number one on Netflix. It's how quickly the speed that Squid Game got to number one. Netflix hit number one in the U.S. Remember, this is a Korean show. Yeah. In the U.S. just four days after the September 17th release. That's despite no promos by Netflix, no spending on marketing, no advertisements,

and no like preexisting book series to launch this whole idea. A Netflix exact credited it to Organic Fandom. New term. And organic fandom results in TikTok hashtags of Squid Game being viewed 23 billion times. To quote our buddies over in Gotham in Back. Batman, Jack, that's money. That's power. You can't buy. Bye. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Netflix? Netflix's quality and scale playbook is a copy and paste abroad. Okay, Snackers, put Squid Game out of your head for a second. Netflix's stock last quarter,

it lost, it suffered. It lost 400,000 U.S. subscribers. That's a lot. There's no one left to get in the U.S., so Netflix is turning abroad for growth. And Jack and I are seeing two keys to how Netflix expands to a new country. First quality and then scale. Quality is how Netflix pays top money to get the top actors, screenplay writers, and crews to produce movies abroad. Scale is the small things, but it does it well. It aggressively dubs these international shows so anyone could watch it. Squid Game was dubbed into 34 different languages before it launched on September 17. So with Netflix, quality wins at 3.8 million Korean subscribers. The most of any streaming service in Korea immediately. And Netflix's scale is how they ensure that the subscribers

in the rest of the world love Netflix too. So quality and scale, that worked for Netflix in Korea. Now it's just copying and pasting it everywhere else. For our second story, the longest undersea electricity cable is now flowing juice from the UK to Norway. It's up. And da da da da see. National grid snackers, they may have to solve the number one criticism of renewable energy. And da, Dese. By the way, the UK and Norway, they're both living in Europe, but they're not in the EU. They're like roommates, but they don't have the same job.

You know what I mean? No, they live on campus, but they're not students at the university. They go to different schools. Everyone's like, are you guys like with this? Why are you hosting? Well, the UK and Norway decided to become power pals. They're going to be roommates. Yesterday, the North Sea Link, that's the name, not that creative, got turned on.

This is a two-way electricity tunnel that spans the North Sea between the United Kingdom and Norway. I mean, Jack, I don't want to get poetic on you, but this thing is like leaping through mountains, going under fjords. It's like a Viking fairy tale. Ain't no mountain high enough for getting my juice to you, babe. And then it goes under the sea for a long period of time. So on the one end of this 450-mile electric tunnel, you got Blythe, England. Yeah, coastal town, lovely, connected to thousands of offshore wind turbines. Also nice.

On the other end of the 450 miles, you have Kvidal, Norway. First of all, great pronunciation. Second of all, also a charming town, a port town close to the biggest hydroelectric dam in Norway. And now those two power generating hubs are connected by 450 miles of electric power lines. I'm sorry, Jack, can you sprinkle a little bit of context on that for us? Yes, Lake Michigan is 118 miles wide. So this is like the width of four Lake Michigan's. that's a long power line.

Again, it's spanning the North Sea, but it's under the ground the whole time. Yes. It's like the Hudson River. No, sorry, like the Hudson Tunnel. No, the Lincoln Tunnel. I think Jack just got canceled by the entire city of New York. I don't know. We have the pos the pod people.

I think it's like the Lincoln Tunnel. Under the Hudson River. Well, Jack's trying to redeem himself with like a map over there. The way we are thinking about this new undersea cable, why it's such a big deal is it's basically a glorified extension. It's like the orange, heavy duty waterproof line. that your dad set up to watch the movie in the tent. You're camping in the backyard. It's plugged in. Is this thing working? Is this thing on? But this glorified extension cord,

it's not for the internet, like some of the undersea cables you might have heard of. This is for high voltage electricity. Now, the company who Electro married the UK and Norway on this is National Grid, a publicly traded company. Yep. It cost National Grid, $1.8 billion to set this thing up. But the stock is up 2% on this milestone. for voltage. Here's what's so interesting. National Grid, they're double-dipping on this investment. Their revenues go up thanks to it, and it also cuts their costs.

Long term. Because with this link, Europe needs fewer total power plants. Ipsopacta, with this link, National Grid can serve more electricity at a way lower cost. And this is called an interconnector, this undersea thing. Brutal name. And that's kind of National Grid's thing. They've done this in the Netherlands, in France, and in Belgium, too. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies?

over at National Grid. They call this grid balancing. We call it electro-sharing. Snackers, the number one criticism of renewable energy, inconsistency. That's the criticism. How do you charge your Tesla with your solar panels on your roof if it's 52 and raining? Well, sometimes in the UK, they've got more wind than they need when others don't have wind. And with this cable, the UK can share their extra wind electricity with Norway on windy times of the year.

Funny thing, Jack, Norway, it's hydro dams, they sometimes have more water flowing than Norway needs when others need water. Well, with this cable, Norway can share their excess hydroelectricity with the UK. So Snacker, since wind and solar and hydro aren't as consistent as like pumping old school oil, electro-sharing like this, it is key for renewable energy. Electro sharing smooths out the renewable energy production of two different places. It's like a glorified extension cord. Just not bright orange. For our third and final story, Jack, I'm checking it.

My Instagram is, mine's still not working. Mine's up. Oh, yours is up. Okay. Yeah, mine works. All right, I see the cake now. Okay, third and final story. Cryptocurrency stores are opening up outside the USA.

Cryptocurrency stores. Crypto stores is the latest trend in digital currency and it's purely physical. So here's the scene, Jack. You're walking around. You see the door. You open it. You look up. You look at the men.

You're like, am I going to get a number two? Should I get number five? Hey there. My name's Tammy. Today's specials cheer corn. What can I get you? Snaggers, the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend. A wild story we noticed that walk-in crypto exchanges are opening up physical crypto stores.

Digital currency physical storefront. This is the KFC of crypto. Jack, this is the brick and mortar of Bitcoin. And it's an extension of the mainstreamification of crypto because, according to the Wall Street Journal, there's 24,000 crypto ATMs in the U.S. right now. You've seen them people. But there aren't any crypto-human tellers. But outside the U.S., we're starting to see some different things. For example, coin nerds, a physical crypto store in Canada. And in Croatia, you have simply named Bitcoin store. And in France, because everything just sounds

sexier, you have Comptoire de Sardomé in Bordeaux. It works for the nice red wine. It would not have sounded sexy if I said it. I cannot pronounce that. The beauty of French is either. It really sexy or it sounds like you just had dentist work? These guys are doing big business. At Coin Nerds in Canada, they did $119 million of customer crypto trades last year. Now, Snackers, here's how Jack and I are seeing the situation. Crypto is incredibly accessible. It is wonderfully digital and incredibly decentralized.

And yet, for some, barriers to crypto still exist. Like trust. Exactly. And full disclosure, Jack and I do own a bunch of cryptocurrencies, but we're comfortable trading them online. And a lot of people just aren't comfortable doing that. Some people want to walk in and talk to a human being and shake their hands pre-COVID, wave at them post-COVID like they do with their bank teller.

The trust factor. That is one of the last remaining barriers to crypto. Right. So physical crypto stores are like Apple stores. Yeah. But instead of telling you about the latest iPhone, they're teaching you about different cryptocurrencies. They're showing you how a digital wallet works and they're handling your first transaction for you. Yeah.

So you're going to walk out and say, okay, so I'll take six. ether and a side of Doge. Now, interestingly, people are paying more for crypto to experience it this physical way with human handholding. This is kind of shocking. These physical crypto stores take a greater percentage fee of the transactions for this service up to 5% and people are willing to pay that. It's all about that free dog treat that give you on the way out. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at physical crypto stores? An unregulated crypto store could be good biz. regulated crypto store would look a lot different. All right, Snackers, now picture this.

You're walking to your local bank. You're looking around. You see six signs up about like your rights, FDIC insurance, the bank's licenses, all of this stuff. That stuff is called regulation. And you see it on any bank in America. Well, right now, crypto stores aren't Apple stores with like geniuses working at a genius bar.

Different situation. These crypto stores are probably hiring anybody with laser eyes on their Twitter account. Yeah. Explaining ether to you. And that's because crypto is relatively. unregulated compared to banking and stock market. If it gets more regulated, you might need a license or be a trained crypto agent to be working at one of these stores. So physical crypto stores, they are shockingly becoming a thing. But regulated crypto stores would be a very different thing.

Jack, can you take the Hudson River and whip up the takeaways for us over there? Netflix stock at a record high as it flexes international muscle. Quality and scale, it's a copy and paste a broad strategy. National Grid just finished its North Sea Link. Electro sharing. That's what solves the problem of renewables. For our third and final story, physical crypto stores are sprouting up a broad. Shocker. And regulated crypto stores, this would be a bit different. Now, time for our snack fact of the day, which Jack and I whipped up as the answer to today's T-Boy Tuesday question. All right. Facebook apps resumed. They started up again. But they were down yesterday, and the outage started at 11.13 a.m. EST and ended at 6.21 p.m. EST.

So how much money did Facebook lose in revenue over those seven hours and eight minutes? So we jumped in Snacks style and Facebook brought in $105 billion in revenue over the last year. That's $199,000 in ad revenue every single minute. All right, let's let that one sink in. Facebook brings in $199,000 of ad revenue, $1,99,000. 372 and 15 cents every minute. So yesterday's outage was 428 minutes. That means Facebook lost 85,331,280 and 20 cents of missed out ad revenues. That Facebook outage cost Facebook $85 million yesterday and lost money. But the stock also fell 5%, which is way more of a loss. It's $5 billion in stock market

value. Yeah, because it wasn't just lost revenue. Facebook also lost consumer trust. And there might be a bigger chance of getting broken up since five of the world's top apps were down yesterday because of one company. Most of all, we know yesterday must have been a really tough day at Facebook headquarters. So we're thinking of you. And for anyone who relies on Facebook for their products or to communicate. In the meantime, Snackers, if you got some other calculations, you can hit us up on Twitter at Jack Kramer, at Nick of New York, at Robin Hood Snacks. I think that's all the ads. That's it. We're going to see everybody tomorrow. Yeah, we'll see tomorrow. And before we go, happy birthday to Ashley's service turning 23 down in Austin. And Tyler Frederick in Washington, D.C. And Stephen Finale over in New York City. Happy birthday,

Hussein Ahmad in Raleigh, North Carolina. And Jashita and Rada, they got an anniversary down in St. Louis. Congrats on getting hitched to Eric and Amy Priester. Yeah. In Anaheim, in their vows, they said that every day will be a T-boy together. It is a T-boy, and Ducks fly together. Presumptuous on the of hockey fan. I round it up there, Jack. I rounded up. This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix and Roblox and I own Bitcoin.

And Nick and I both own some Ethereum. 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.

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