Hello and welcome to Alts Cafe.
The most important alternative investing stories each week, customized to your liking, best enjoyed over a cup of coffee.
Note: Due to a targeting error, some of you have not received Alts Cafe recently. We apologize and have fixed the issue!
Highlights:
- Music & Film: Warner settles UDIO lawsuit, inks a controlled licensing deal, and partners with Stability AI to develop generative music tools
- Collectibles, Culture and Luxury: Superman #1 becomes the most expensive comic book ever sold
- Prediction Markets: Kalshi and StockX team up to launch collectible futures markets, letting traders speculate on Pokémon, Labubu, and sneaker prices
- Private Equity & Private Credit: Blue Owl halts redemptions at one of its private credit funds as investor withdrawals spike
- Sports: Callaway sells Topgolf to PE for $1.1 billion
- Crypto: Senator Warren launches a probe into Trump’s Liberty Financial for alleged ties to North Korea, Russia, and Iran
- Startups & VC: DappRadar pulls the plug on its Web3 analytics business after seven years
- Precious Metals and Gems: There is a growing market for leasing gold bars to generate income from idle bullion
- 🇦🇷 International Investing: Argentina moves to relax glacier mining rules in an effort to accelerate its copper boom
- Real Estate: Home Economics says the worst is over as the housing hangover clears
- Artwork: Frida Kahlo’s “El Sueño” sets a new record at Sotheby’s with a multi-million dollar sale
- Farmland: PitchBook reports a surge in agtech VC funding as climate risk drives innovation in soil tech and synthetic inputs
- Wine, Whiskey & Spirits: Tequila III: an upscale agave tequila resort, is now open for investment
Let’s go
Table of Contents
International Investing
Around the world…
- 🇨🇳 Beijing considers taking equity stakes in private firms as governments explore new stabilizing tools
- 🇺🇿 Uzbekistan pushes a plan for a Central Asian community to strengthen regional coordination
- Scotland prepares government Kilt Bonds as a new national savings product
- 🇦🇷 Argentina moves to relax glacier mining rules in an effort to accelerate its copper boom
Startups & VC
- DappRadar pulls the plug on its Web3 analytics business after seven years
- Seed investors chase hype as valuations soar and discipline breaks down
Music & Film
- Warner settles UDIO lawsuit, inks a controlled licensing deal, and partners with Stability AI to develop generative music tools
- Roc Nation launches a new artist platform following Grammy buzz for Clipse
- Pinkfong’s parent SmartStudy pops 20% as Baby Shark IPOs in Seoul
- Ticket scalping profits face new bans in the UK after Dua Lipa and others call for reform
- Tidal now supports direct indie uploads, but artists won’t earn royalties
Music labels settle lawsuits, shift to licensing
After a year of suing AI music startups, the music industry appears ready to play ball, and is now signing controlled licensing deals.
This is probably good news for music rights investors. These deals should unlock a new revenue tier for rights holders.
- Warner Music just settled its lawsuit against UDIO and struck a new licensing agreement
- At the same time, three major labels (UMG, Sony, and Warner) just have licensed their catalogs to Klay, an AI-powered music streaming startup that will let users legally remake songs. (This makes Klay the first AI-startup to land deals with all three major labels.)
Collectibles, Culture and Luxury
- Superman #1 becomes the most expensive comic book ever sold
- A test pressing of Nirvana’s first radio-played single sold for $59k
- Ripley’s Believe It or Not buys Cattelan’s solid gold toilet after years of mystery surrounding the stolen piece
- Nearly $10k worth of Tom Brady cards were stolen from a CardVault store in New York
Funko is in real trouble
Two pieces dropped this week that paint a rough picture for the Pop empire.
MovieWeb reports that Funko may shut down its entire K-Pop Demon Hunters line.
Kotaku goes even further, detailing how Funko Pop’s parent company is now near insolvent after a terrible quarter.
If you have been in the Alts community for a while, this may not come as a surprise. We covered Funko in detail back in our original deep dive.
One takeaway at the time was clear: Funko massively overproduced, flooded the market with endless variants, and created a collector ecosystem where only a tiny fraction of pieces hold any real long-term value.
What we are seeing now looks like the downstream effect of that manufactured scarcity dynamic finally catching up to them.
Crypto
- Senator Warren launches a probe into Trump’s Liberty Financial for alleged ties to North Korea, Russia, and Iran
- Japan proposes a 20% flat tax on crypto gains
- The ICIJ’s Crypto Laundromat Report reveals how billions flowed through opaque digital asset networks
- BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF sees record outflows, shaking confidence in institutional crypto products
Bitcoin mining Part 2: Tax deductions & depreciation benefits
Most people buy Bitcoin, but mining can be more tax-efficient. I explore how US tax law rewards miners through powerful deductions and depreciation benefits.
In Part 1, we broke down how mining works, why it can outperform simply holding BTC, and how infrastructure ownership offers yield, flexibility, and real asset value, even through volatile cycles (like we’re in now.)
But there’s another layer to this story that deserves closer attention: tax strategy.
Because when structured properly, mining can be remarkably efficient way to reduce your taxable income, thanks to new rules about how the IRS treats depreciation, business deductions, and capital investments.
Private Equity & Private Credit
- Blue Owl halts redemptions at one of its private credit funds as investor withdrawals spike
- CapVest raises a massive $3.8 billion continuation fund
- Jeffrey Gundlach blasts “garbage lending” in private credit, warning of unsustainable risk stacking
- Bain Capital acquires Concert Golf from Clearlake in a niche hospitality-focused PE deal
The Changing World of RIAs
The RIA world is shifting fast. Private equity is rolling up firms, fees are under pressure, and younger investors are learning and investing on their own.
The PE takeover is bittersweet. It’s tough to see so many independent RIAs absorbed into big platforms.
But there is one real silver lining: scale makes it easier to offer alternatives, with better access, better due diligence, and better tooling than most small RIAs could manage on their own.
Sports
- Callaway sells Topgolf to PE for $1.1 billion
- The NFL is exploring a multi-billion dollar international rights package as it looks to expand overseas
- Juventus plans a share sale to stabilize finances after years of turbulence
- Sixth Street’s $8 billion sports strategy gets profiled in a deep dive covering its stakes in Real Madrid, the Spurs, and more
Mexican football is attracting US investors
Liga MX is becoming a serious target for US capital
American investors are starting to move into Liga MX, the flagship league of Mexican football, and the reasoning is straightforward.
Liga MX has strong viewership in the US, particularly among the 45 million people of Mexican heritage. Yet like many sports, the league remains inefficient in how it sells media rights.
Right now, clubs negotiate broadcast deals individually, but that’s changing. If the league centralizes rights, analysts expect average values to double.
Prediction Markets
- Kalshi and StockX team up to launch collectible futures markets, letting traders speculate on Pokémon, Labubu, and sneaker prices
Gambling vs investing: What’s the difference?
The line between gambling and ivnesting is evaporating — and the drumbeat is getting louder.
So we wanted to ask:
What’s the actual difference between gambling and investing?
To find out, we turned to members of the Alts community.
Real Estate
- Home Economics says the worst is over as the housing hangover clears
- Zillow warns of a nationwide home value decline as prices soften across most major metro areas
- The median age of U.S. homebuyers hits 59, reflecting affordability constraints and delayed purchasing
Inside Scoop: Why Sonder went down
Until recently, Sonder was one of the most hyped names in the short-term rental space. They raised over $1 billion, got into bed with Marriott, and went public via SPAC in 2022.
Eric Klein from Sonno Homes lived in Montreal during Sonder’s rise, and watched everything unfold firsthand. Here’s his take on Sonder:
- They expanded recklessly, bypassing key diligence
- The SPAC exit served as a cash-out event
- Marriott walked after seeing how badly operations were run
- The company was saddled with 9,000 long-term leases in markets that later changed the rules.
Artwork
- Frida Kahlo’s “El Sueño” sets a new record at Sotheby’s with a multi-million dollar sale
Precious Metals and Gems
- There is a growing market for leasing gold bars to generate income from idle bullion
- The US considers overhauling capital gains taxes on gold
- A Kentucky man digging a backyard pool uncovers $800,000 in buried gold, triggering a modern-day treasure hunt
Farmland
- PitchBook reports a surge in agtech VC funding as climate risk drives innovation in soil tech, supply chains, and synthetic inputs
Wine, Whiskey & Spirits
Introducing Tequila III
This is a $400k investment in Mexico’s first architectural barrel facility isn’t an alternative asset. It’s a real estate arbitrage backed by 50 years of proof.
Phase 1: The Scotch Model (Immediate B2B Cash Flow) Your investment funds a 300-barrel storage facility generating $80k–$100k in annual recurring B2B revenue, insulated from tourism swings.
Phase 2: The Bourbon Scaling (Tourism & Experiences) Storage scales to 900 barrels (over $320k in B2B revenue) while adding high-margin premium tasting rooms and experiential tours.
Phase 3: The Napa Transformation (Hospitality & Events) Modular luxury suites and event spaces unlock hospitality revenue, with flexible units that shift between lodging, events, or additional storage.
See you next time,
Stefan
Disclosures
- This issue was sponsored by Worthy Wealth
- This issue contains no affiliate links
