MarginMike

How the rich made it, lost it, and what it cost.

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@paxmlian studios rejected the risk, so they never shared the upside

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@auren_xbt nine months later Apple incorpoated. the risk he fled dissapeared

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@getmoat Murdoch's $125M is the most expensive "read the pitch" lesson

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@0xorenx $130,000 to stay quiet. then a book deal to talk

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@darkcrypto_off four deleted accounts. never build your income om rented land

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@highrollerfiles power of attorney: one signature, and it's not your money anymore

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@kaiwestro gifts and a jet aren't hospitality. they're customer acquisition cost

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@wadeledger title search: the cheapest insurance he never bought

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@0xlexlab rich on paper, broke in cash. liquidity is the real test

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

Conor McGregor's whiskey brand sold in a deal worth up to $600 million. His closest teammate says it was his idea, and that he was promised 5%.

His name is Artem Lobov. For years he was Conor's training partner, cornerman and, in Conor's words, his "brother."

In the video below, he says he never took a cent for Conor's fight camps. "Conor, I'm not taking this. You're my brother."

His version: he scouted the distilleries when only a handful in Ireland made their own whiskey. He pushed Conor toward a cheap, entry-level bottle instead of a premium one. Cheap means volume. Volume is what buyers pay for.

Proper No. Twelve launched in 2018.

April 2021: McGregor and his partners sold their majority stake to Proximo, the owner of Jose Cuervo and Bushmills, in a deal worth up to $600 million. Forbes put his 2021 earnings outside the cage at $158 million, mostly from the sale.

Lobov says Conor shook his hand and promised him 5% "no matter what." He valued it at $6.5 to $7 million. Conor denied there was ever a deal.

There was no contract. Just a handshake.

Lobov sued. In April 2026 they settled at Ireland's High Court. In a statement read in court, Conor thanked Lobov "for his hard work for my whiskey business." The terms were never made public.

Keep this part. A handshake between brothers is worth exactly what the richer brother decides it's worth. If it matters, write it down before it's worth $600 million, not after.

Did Conor owe him 5%, or was a thank-you in court all he earned?

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@dawyykx the movie grossed hundreds of millions. the victims got leftovers

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@kkairroo no co-founder means no split. $80M, one cap table line

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@0xlexlab Zynga owned the games. Facebook owned the switch

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

Pornstar Charlie Sheen was making $1.8 million an episode, the highest salary on TV. Then he paid millions to keep one secret.

November 17, 2015. He sat down with Matt Lauer on TODAY.

"I'm here to admit that I am in fact HIV positive."

He said he'd been diagnosed roughly four years earlier. And for four years, people had been charging him for their silence.

In the video below, Lauer asks how much he paid. "Enough to bring it into the millions." Reports put it as high as $10 million.

The people weren't strangers. They were "deep in my inner circle." One woman, he confirmed, photographed his medication in his bathroom and threatened to sell it to the tabloids.

"That's money they're taking from my children," he said. "I got five kids and a granddaughter."

Lauer asked if he was still paying. "Not after today."

His version wasn't the only one. Sheen said every partner since his diagnosis was told, "no exception." Bree Olson, who lived with him in early 2011, has said publicly he never told her. She says she tested negative.

Keep this part. Hush money isn't a payment. It's a subscription. Every check proves the secret is worth buying, so the price only goes up. Sheen stopped paying the only way that works: he gave the secret away for free.

Was going public the bravest move he made, or just the cheapest one?

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@kaienphase anyone could upload until 2020. verification came after the scandal

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

They promised young women $3,000 to $5,000 and that the videos would never go online. The company behind Pornhub made more than $860,000 from them. It paid a $1.8 million fine.

The site was GirlsDoPorn, run out of San Diego by Michael Pratt.

The pitch was a clothed modeling job. Women who answered were then told it was an adult shoot, but that it would never be posted online and they would stay anonymous.

Pratt paid other young women to act as references and swear the videos would stay offline.

They went online. Prosecutors say hundreds of women were recruited, many in their late teens. Some say they weren't allowed to leave the hotel room until filming ended.

In the video below, the FBI explains the scheme. The site made millions.

2019: charges filed. Pratt fled and landed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.
2020: a civil court ordered him and his partners to pay 22 women $12.7 million.
2022: arrested in Madrid.
September 2025: 27 years in federal prison. Partner Ruben Garcia got 20. Operations chief Matthew Wolfe got 14.

And the platform? Between 2017 and 2020, Aylo, the company behind Pornhub, took more than $100,000 directly from GirlsDoPorn and about $764,000 in ad revenue tied to its videos.

In 2023 it settled: more than $1.8 million to the US government, separate payments to the women, three years under an independent monitor. It did not plead guilty to any crime.

Keep this part. Follow the money in any scandal and you find two bills. The people who ran it pay in years. The platforms that profited pay in dollars.

Should anyone at the platform have faced prison, or was $1.8 million the right price?

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@0x_Renjii roughly 2x what they made. plus victim payments and a monitor

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@wadeledger agreed. trust was the product they sold, then betrayed

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@dawyykx money doesn't change people. it ampfiles them, and everyone nearby

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@0ddscent four rounds is a coin flip. ask me after forty

[MarginMike @0xmarginmike]

@Syntzxbt the affair made headlines. the business-class tickets made the fine