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The WC – Let’s eradicate a South African beetle

May 27, 2022 | ± 4 minutes

New here? The WC is a random mix of useful / interesting / notable stuff that gets pumped into your inbox every Wednesday.

(We know today is Friday, and yes, we know WC also means toilet. I’ve had to live with these initials for 43 years.)

Let’s go!

The Crypto Crash hit African Americans hardest

I didn’t know this, but African Americans trust crypto and hold more crypto in significantly larger proportions than white folks:

That’s counter to more traditional asset classes like stocks, mutual funds, bonds, and bank savings accounts.

Because of this, black Americans were the demographic that was hit hardest throughout the last couple of weeks as $LUNA went to (effectively) zero.

It’s a bad week for Elon

Earlier this week, it emerged that Elon Musk allegedly paid a SpaceX flight attendant $250k to bury a lawsuit claiming Musk offered to buy her a horse in exchange for certain, uh.. special treatment.

Tesla shares are off 7% off the horseback of the scandal, which has pushed Musk out of the exclusive $200B club. He’s now slumming it with Jeff Bezos in the $100B to $200B club.

FWIW, I still think he’s going to back away from buying Twitter. And that is going to cost him a hell of a lot more than $250k.

Bitcoin’s just a levered play on the US Equities market

Before, Bitcoin was a solid way to diversify your portfolio away from equities. The correlation between the two was minimal to nonexistent.

Welp…

For the last six months, the two have tracked nearly 1:1.

Bitcoin is just the S&P 500 with more volatility, and Ethereum is just a more volatile version of Bitcoin:

Double welp…

I’m taking Video Games and Sports Cards to 0%

In yesterday’s Alts Cafe, I showed readers some pretty ugly charts for Video Games and Sports Cards. If you didn’t see it or need a reminder, this is what they look like on fractional trading markets:

The slightly more market-based CardLadder 50 (a leading sports cards index) looks a bit better:

It looks better but not by much.

While there’s no official video games index yet, a close analysis of the recent Goldin Elite auction shows a significant softening in the market.

This is what our ALTS 1 target allocation looks like now:

ALTS 1 Allocation.

This beetle will cost South Africa 65m trees & $18.5B

Until today, I’d never heard of a polyphagous shot hole borer. It’s a tiny parasitic beetle that’s set to destroy most of South Africa’s urban forests. It looks like this:

How can something so small have such a massive impact?The female beetle burrows into trees and leaves fungus in the tunnel for her offspring that contains a pathogen that blocks the circulation of the tree. Some trees, planes particularly, become reproductive hosts, or breeding grounds.

Perhaps even more distressing to the hipsters in my audience – around 5% of the world’s avocados come from South Africa, and those trees are particularly susceptible to the parasite. The country is set to lose perhaps $500m from that crop alone.

Get your smashed avocado toast while you can.

Stefan had to socially distance during our offsite because he managed to get COVID.

What caught your eye this week? Respond to an email. We always read our inbox.

Cheers,
Wyatt

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Author

Wyatt Cavalier

Wyatt Cavalier

With a background in finance & intelligence analysis, Wyatt has an unhealthy obsession with finding the best blue chip investment opportunities. His previous newsletter, Fractional, resonated deeply with subscribers, bringing actionable insights and unconventional trading strategies. His rare book collection specializes in banned editions. He currently lives in Spain with his beautiful wife, three young boys, and dog Monty.

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    Disclaimer: The authors of Alt Assets, Inc. are not finance or tax professionals. They are self-taught accredited investors, sharing information, research, and lessons learned. The published content is unique, based on certain assumptions and market conditions at the time of publishing and is intended to serve solely as research, not financial advice. Alts I LLC (the “Fund”) is an affiliate of Alt Assets, Inc. and the Fund has conducted a private placement offering under Rule 506(c) of Regulation D of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. The Fund may invest in one, several or all of the alternative asset classes that Alt Assets, Inc. publishes content on its site. Any published articles on Alt Assets, Inc. that an alternative asset has a “buy”, “pass”, “overvalued” or “undervalued” designation does not factor into the asset classes that the Fund through its manager ultimately invests in, and thus, any of the Fund’s investments that have positive designations on the Alt Assets, Inc.’s site are purely coincidental as the Fund is actively managed and guided by its own investment parameters as summarized in the relevant private placement memorandum.