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Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

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Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#111
post #44

If Goldman are raising money from investors it's probably because they think they can charge those investors for advising on and structuring a deal. It doesn't mean Goldman are buying Celsius. It's only a vote of confidence in Celsius to the extent that it means Goldman think they can find people who want to buy it and who will pay an investment bank to do so.

$2B for what was suppose to be $12B of AUM. Doesn’t sound like a vote of confidence. Question is what priority are funds distributed. Depositors are unsecured creditors. Are there secured creditors that would be before them?

Any precedent for this?

Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wall street is in on the crypto idea. They see a future. Soon (a few years?) we will see the crypto craze back on. Maybe not as crazy and better regulated but it will be there. The "Turn a $1000 into a $million craze" is probably no more. But crypto is here to stay. A few wall street firms have started to recommend Crypto as an investment. Goldman probably sees a future where their clients will have crypto assets so…

Can you refer to any source or citation on general Wallstreet being pro crypto?

https://www.fidelity.com/crypto/overview

https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2022/01/11/goldman-sac...

https://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/content/newsroom/press-re...

and on and on...

Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're risking their name, for a start.

The good name of Goldman Sachs, lol. The only people who don't find the vampire squid's name toxic, are those who only care about money to the point that these sorts of things never would have bothered them.

Cough imdb cough

Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you refer to any source or citation on general Wallstreet being pro crypto?

https://www.fidelity.com/crypto/overview https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2022/01/11/goldman-sac... https://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/content/newsroom/press-re... and on and on...

Seems they're supportive but it would be nice to see more explicit articles supporting crypto than "I'm in crypto too".

Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wall street is in on the crypto idea. They see a future. Soon (a few years?) we will see the crypto craze back on. Maybe not as crazy and better regulated but it will be there. The "Turn a $1000 into a $million craze" is probably no more. But crypto is here to stay. A few wall street firms have started to recommend Crypto as an investment. Goldman probably sees a future where their clients will have crypto assets so…

The one thing of value that crypto actually delivers (and which will never be replicated in tradfi because of incentives of existing players) is atomic multi-party transactions across unrelated parties. Something like a flash loan would never exist in tradfi. Being able to borrow billions with _no_ risk of loss due to execution delays between borrowing money and executing a trade means more liquidity and lower risk f…

I may be misinformed but haven’t those flash loans been heavily exploited?

Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#116
I don't have formal education in economics/finance; it took me a while to understand their language. Here's an attempt to explain it.

Assets in this context means loan contracts between Celsius and its borrowers.

When a finance company GLC (Great Lending Company) makes a loan of $100K to a borrower Joe it deposits $100K in Joe's account in exchange for Joe signing a contract (lets call it LC) that stipulates interest rate, repayment terms etc., On GLC's book the deposit of $100K becomes its liability and LC becomes asset.

Now, GLC could also offer deposit services with attractive interest rates. The deposits needn't (and often do not) equal loans made. If inflows into GLC's reserves match outflows it typically works OK. In an economic up-cycle (low interest rate, positive consumer sentiment etc.,) everyone is happy. But when those assumptions change (usually high interest rate) some of GLC's borrower's begin to default. And it take just a fraction of borrowers to default for GLC to become insolvent. At the first sign of trouble GLC's depositors take their money out, popularly called a bank run. It thus depletes GLC's reserves making them take measures such as pausing withdrawals.

At this point GLC has 3 options.

  1. Borrow; they could use their assets (i.e., LCs) as collateral.
  2. Sell their assets at a discount.
  3. Go bust.
As you can guess #1 and #2 are short term measures to tide over short-term down-cycle. But the current macro situation is in no way short-term. High interest rates are going to be here for a long time. If anything fed is pondering to raise interest rates as high and 5%. So for GLC #3 is the only option.

This is where companies like Goldman come in. In a bankruptcy firesale they scoop up GLC's assets at steep discount. GLC could have assets worth $10B (i.e., it has made loan contracts worth $10B). A big chunk of those loans could be bad. But even if say 70% of them are bad Goldman could make a hefty profit of $1B by buying $3B of assets by paying $2B. The risk is at this point no one knows what those loan contracts are really worth. It takes quite a bit of time and effort to untangle these loan contracts that were made during boom time. GLC won't have neither of those resources in times of distress. So GLC and Goldman make rough calculations and agree on $2B price. It may turn out to be worth 0 (highly unlikely) or $5B or somewhere between. But either way it's highly likely that Goldman stands to make good profit out of this firesale. Because they have a robust balance sheet and resources they could wait out for years to recover from borrowers.

Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#117

Anybody trading the Celsius token? I had been expecting steeper dips so I missed that 600% flip. Not exactly my perfect storm for buying a dip, I usually wait for an information asymmetry in my favor, but shoulda just taken a slightly smaller position.

Where can you speculate on it?

Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#118

It's taken me a while to understand this but a very common cycle for tech is: 1)Startup founder gets and idea and develops it. 2)The startup develops the tech and finds a market for it 3)The Startup becomes successful 4)The market falls apart and the founder can't guide the startup thru the difficulties 5)Start up is in distress or fails 6)An MBA type comes along buys everything at a deep discount 7)The new manager r…

A slightly more cynical version: 1) Startup founder gets an idea and develops a legitimate product. 2) The company gains some customers, but the growth is tough, since competing products often sell below cost. 3) The founder gives up and goes to VCs. 4) VCs take away the controlling stake in exchange for an endless stream of cheap money, so the company can start selling dollars for 90 cents just like the competition.…

I agree with the (cynical) view of founders, VCs, and equity. Founders who sell their business to VCs get what they deserve (an education.)

Your digression into the link between stimulus cash, baby formula, and inflation seems somewhat less accurate.

Firstly, baby formula (and wheat) are not luxuries. The amount of formula you need is 100% based on your baby, which neither knows no cares how much cash you have. My guess is its the first thing a mother buys, not the last. So excess cash, or lack thereof, has no impact on demand.

If demand is stable, that means inflation is caused by constrained supply. Which is exactly what has happened year - close a factory producing significant % of supply, and supply drops.

The same with wheat. No one is buying extra bread with their extra bread. But global wheat supply has been affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Yes, extra cash can contribute to inflation, and no doubt that has had some effect, but between the war, and the pandemic the primary inflation seems to be caused by supply issues. And oil. The war drives up the oil price, and that knocks on to everything.

Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#119

I don't have formal education in economics/finance; it took me a while to understand their language. Here's an attempt to explain it. Assets in this context means loan contracts between Celsius and its borrowers. When a finance company GLC (Great Lending Company) makes a loan of $100K to a borrower Joe it deposits $100K in Joe's account in exchange for Joe signing a contract (lets call it LC) that stipulates interest…

The loans that Celsius gave out to random people were over-collateralized with cryptocurrencies. I don't understand how they could have become insolvent from that. I guess they made bad investments with customer deposits or made uncollateralized loans to other parties.

Re: Goldman Raising $2B to Buy Distressed Celsius Assets

#120

Doesn't say how much of their own money they'll risk.

They're risking their name, for a start.

They'll make money screwing their customers. That's what their name means as much as turning winners into superwinners.
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