Preme

[Preme @visionary2099]

@andrewdsouza @boardyai Will do!

[Andrew D'Souza @andrewdsouza]

I want to help 100 founders raise their rounds before the end of the year.

We just unlocked a version of @boardyai that we didn’t think was possible.

Boardy raised his own $8M seed round earlier this year. Since then, he's introduced thousands of founders to investors who have raised millions.

We’ve been testing an overpowered version internally, and the results have been wild - founders are meeting stronger investors and closing rounds in weeks instead of months.

He’s not ready for public release yet (the token costs are insane), but it’s time to start introducing him to the world.

I’m personally working with 100 founders who are actively raising to help them close before the end of the year. You’ll work directly with me and the Boardy team and get early access before this version rolls out next year.

Comment “Boardy” below, and I’ll message you the link to apply.

If you know someone who’s raising, tag them below.

[Andrew D'Souza @andrewdsouza]

Dear algorithm, now show me amazing investors for these cracked founders (or @boardyai will)

[Preme @visionary2099]

@andrewdsouza @boardyai Boardy

[Preme @visionary2099]

@JulianGoldieSEO Yes

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

For the longest time, my podcast was a mega failure.

Three years. 200+ episodes. Embarrassing download numbers. I kept telling myself "just one more episode" because I had nothing to lose.

Somewhere around episode 150, recording in my closet, I had this moment: I'm never gonna be the next Tim Ferriss. I can't interview like him. I'm not that smooth.

So I figured out I'd just focus on giving out 100% sauce. Tactics that actually work. Ideas that fire up founders. Zero fluff.

It worked.

I went from 10k subs to 300k subs in 18 months. Today "The Startup Ideas Podcast" gets millions of listens a month.

And most importantly, I'm always getting DMs from founders where they "stole" and idea from the show, or learned something that put them on a completely new life trajectory. How cool is that?!

The closet forced me to focus on the only thing that mattered: whether I was saying something worth hearing.

And because I'm not a content creator (ive got businesses to run!), i didnt prepare much. Just shared what I was learning in real-time.

The constraints made the content better.

I told myself I'll only be able to get out of the closet when I deserve it. When I see comments on yt flowing in. Not just high school friends or fam members.

I eventually upgraded to a home office, but those 200+ episodes in the closet taught me everything. You don't need perfect conditions.

I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for sticking with me.

You could have spent your time elsewhere.

But you spent it with me.

I'll give you more sauce than you know what to do with.

Teach you everything I'm learning in real-time.

Free.

Thank you.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

Recently, there have been a number of media stories suggesting that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (together referred herein as “F2”) shareholders are seeking forgiveness of money that is ostensibly owed by F2 to the government in connection with their potential release from conservatorship. The subtext of the media stories is that F2 shareholders, which include many supporters of @realDonaldTrump, are looking for a gift from the President. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As the largest common stockholders of both companies for the last 13 years, we have been leading the charge on behalf of all F2 shareholders to help them to exit from conservatorship. We believe that doing so will enable F2 to maximize the benefits to the U.S. government and the housing finance system while respecting the rule of law and longstanding basic principles of conservatorship.

F2 shareholders don’t have their hands out. The opposite is the case. Hundreds of billions of dollars of funds that belonged to F2 were unilaterally taken by the government years ago, and the companies never received credit for these payments.

F2 shareholders are simply seeking credit for payments that have already been made to the government so that a release from conservatorship can occur. Credit for these payments through the elimination of the accounting balance of the government's senior preferred stock will enable F2 to achieve their full values in the stock market, maximizing recoveries for the government and minority shareholders. Furthermore, we believe that F2's exit from conservatorship will enable the GSEs to operate more successfully and efficiently, with more stable management and at lower cost, greatly benefiting our housing finance system.

The facts around the government’s involvement in F2 are best understood by reviewing their history since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC).

F2 History Since the GFC
As with other financial institutions that required capital during the GFC, F2 received injections of capital from the government in the form of senior preferred stock (SPS). The government funds were invested in F2 on highly onerous terms compared to other financial institutions at the time (other than AIG whose terms were similar).

The terms of the government SPS provided for F2 to pay 10% cash interest, or alternatively paid in kind at a 12% interest rate. The government also received $2 billion in commitment fees and 79.9% of the common stock of both companies in the form of penny warrants.

On August 12, 2012, more than three years after the financial crisis, the Obama administration unilaterally revised the terms of the SPS to provide that the government would receive 100% of the profits of both companies, the so-called Net Worth Sweep.

At the time, the government explained that it had modified the SPS terms because F2 would never be able to repay the SPS under its original terms. At the time this statement was made by the government, the record (revealed during discovery) shows that the government knew that F2 were about to become massively profitable and would therefore be able to repay the SPS, and be in a position to emerge from conservatorship and return value to shareholders. The SPS terms were modified by the Obama administration in an attempt to prevent this eventuality and to expropriate cash that could be directed toward other favored administration priorities.

Months after the Net Worth Sweep was implemented, F2 began generating massive profits as their accountants required them to reverse the large accounting reserves that the companies had taken during the GFC in anticipation of losses that did not occur. In other words, both companies over reserved for losses during the GFC, and when those losses did not occur, their accountants required the reserves to be reversed, generating massive profits for both companies.

As a result of the Net Worth Sweep and the massive profits and cash flows generated by both companies, F2 repaid $301 billion of the original $191 billion invested by the government. As a result, the government has received an 11.6% return on its investment in F2 SPS, 160 basis points more per annum, $25 billion more than the original contractual terms of the SPS.

Despite the $301 billion in payments, F2 did not reduce the SPS liabilities on their balance sheets. Put simply, $301 billion left the companies and there was no accounting for any of the interest or principal payments to the government. The SPS liabilities have therefore remained outstanding as if no payments had been made.

If the payments to the government were not accounted for as interest and/or a payments of principal, what were they and how were they accounted for?

Money can leave a company in only a few ways: as a payment for goods or services to suppliers, rent, wages for employees, interest to creditors, or dividends to shareholders. Each of the above require one or more accounting entries under GAAP accounting. If the Net Worth Sweep payments were indeed payments to the SPS under their revised terms, why were they not accounted for as such?

The fact that F2 never received accounting credit for making $301 billion in payments to the government does not mean that the payments did not take place. While in this conservatorship, the government chose not to account for payments to the SPS, that does not change the economic reality as to what transpired here.

Never before or since has a company in conservatorship made payments to a creditor or preferred stockholder, whether to the government or to a private party, that were not accounted for. All previous conservatorships before or since have accounted for all payments made to creditors. In fact, respecting the hierarchy of claims in a conservatorship is critically important to the ability of financial institutions to raise capital during periods of market stress as no investor will invest in a distressed financial institution if the government can simply steal money from a conservatorship, leaving creditors, preferred stockholders, and common stockholders high and dry.

Here, $301 billion left F2 and went to the government for the benefit of taxpayers, and the liability under the SPS remained outstanding, and has continued to increase substantially.

While Treasury Secretary Mnuchin ended the Net Worth Sweeps in 2017 allowing F2 to build capital, the terms of the SPS were again amended so that their balances would increase with each dollar of capital retained by the companies. As a result, the SPS balances on F2’s balance sheets now total $348.2 billion.

Secretary Mnuchin modified the terms of the SPS in this manner to preserve the government’s control over F2, maintain a strong negotiating position in light of outstanding litigation, and to keep the government in the driver seat in connection with any negotiations in connection with their release from conservatorship. As we have seen previously, under government control, F2 can apparently use whatever accounting it wants for its SPS, but the economic reality is that F2 have built substantial capital of $161 billion since the termination of the Net Worth Sweep, approaching what is required for their emergence.

The press has referred to the potential cancellation of the $348.2 billion balance as a gift from the government to the shareholders of F2. This is not an accurate reflection of the facts. As previously explained, the government has been paid more than it was contractually owed under the extremely onerous terms of the SPS.

The fact that Fannie and Freddie never received credit for these payments, and the SPS balances have increased under Mnuchin’s revised accounting do not change the economic reality on what has transpired here.

Why Is It in the Best Interest of the Government to Cancel the SPS Balance Sheet Liability?

Putting aside the economic reality of the SPS repayment by F2, it is in the best interests of the government to remove this liability from F2's balance sheets for a number of reasons:

First, no private sector investor will invest in F2 in the future if the government can unilaterally revise the terms of F2’s liabilities at will. This will effectively eliminate F2's ability to raise capital to emerge from conservatorship while also impairing the companies trading values, and the value of the government's investment in both companies.

Second, the 'cost' to the government for cancelling the SPS balance is only 20.1 cents on the dollar because the government owns 79.9% of the common stock of F2 through the exercise of its penny warrants, and reductions in a company's liabilities increase the residual value to its common stockholders. In other words, for each dollar of SPS that is cancelled, the government recovers 79.9 cents of replacement value through its warrant ownership in both companies.

Third, while the government could attempt to convert the SPS into common stock thereby massively diluting common stockholders, the cost and risk of the resulting litigation, delay to the exit from conservatorship, and the impairment to the trading value of F2 common stock held by the government would vastly overwhelm the benefit of doing so when compared with cancelling the SPS accounting balance and consummating a release from conservatorship with support from the institutional and retail investment communities.

F2 stock is held by millions of small shareholders and by major institutions that manage money for retail investors such as Capital Group. While the media often depicts Pershing Square as having wealthy investors, our funds are held by thousands of small shareholders as well as pension funds and other fiduciaries that invest on behalf of retirees and other small investors. While the press and some politicians attempt to portray the F2 release from conservatorship as a windfall for the rich, the vast majority of the value created here will go to small investors.

The notion that the Trump administration would act in a manner to wipe out F2 investors for an uncertain and likely suboptimal outcome is extremely unlikely in our view.

For all of the above reasons, we believe that F2 common stock will be an excellent investment for the government, the junior preferred stockholders, and the common shareholders, but the usual precautions remain. Caveat emptor.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

Skeptics are attempting to discredit my views by making the case that I am conflicted or otherwise vulnerable to tariffs, a market crash or a correction, or that I have somehow positioned our portfolio to benefit from my recommended 90-day pause on the implementation of reciprocal tariffs.

So for the record:

1. Neither I nor Pershing Square have any margin leverage or any other instrument or arrangement which will create liquidity issues for me or the funds we manage if the market crashes. None. We don’t use margin. Never have. Never will.

2. We have substantial cash on hand ready to be deployed from the recent sale of a large investment.

3. We have only one investment, Nike 3-year call options, that is directly affected by the tariffs, a position that represents 1.5% of our portfolio.

4. Unlike other asset managers, our capital base is more than 90% permanent so we are not exposed to redemptions from investors.

5. We own some of the greatest businesses in the world, which have durable growth models and extremely dominant franchises.

6. Our companies are well-capitalized, and to the extent they have debt, they have long-term, laddered maturities.

All of the above said, we don’t short stocks and we have no hedges in place that would protect us from a self-inflicted market crash as we are long only.

We will suffer mark-to-market losses if the market crashes, but we will not be sellers in a declining market.

We will be buyers of great businesses at highly discounted prices which will benefit us and our investors over the long term.

And our companies will likely be buying back their own shares which will increase their per-share, intrinsic values over the long term.

Over the long term, we are exposed to the health of our country and its economy. This is my only investment ‘conflict’ if you want to call it that.

I am one of the most fortunate people in the world for many reasons. With good fortune, I have an enormous responsibility to help our country and our citizens, and we have made substantial progress over the last 76 days. I don’t want to see a lot of progress get thrown out due to an unforced error.

Those that did not vote for @realDonaldTrump want to see him fail and are rooting for a market crash, recession or worse so they can feel righteous in how they cast their vote.

I have a lot of respect for our president and what he has accomplished so far, but I don’t think he is infallible, which is why I am stating loud and clear that I strongly believe launching tariffs on April 9th against the entire world — massively in excess of what we are being charged — is a mistake.

The right answer in my view is a 90-day pause to give the president time to carefully and strategically resolve our historically unfair global trading position.

That’s my view. Feel free to ignore it and unfollow me if you don’t like it or don’t care what I think.

[Preme @visionary2099]

@KashPatelX Agree

[🇭🇷CryptoAnarchyst📈🚀🌚 @CryptoAnarchyst]

@GuyTalksFinance @rockets4all2 You can actually… you know what you can’t? Gold

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Thread of longform pieces on debanking:

[David Marcus @davidmarcus]

How Libra Was Killed.

I never shared this publicly before, but since @pmarca opened the floodgates on @joerogan’s pod, it feels appropriate to shed more light on this.

As a reminder, Libra (then Diem) was an advanced, high-performance, payments-centric blockchain paired with a stablecoin that we built with my team at @Meta. It would’ve solved global payments at scale. Prior to announcing the project, we spent months briefing key regulators in DC and abroad. We then announced the project in June 2019 alongside 28 companies. Two weeks later, I was called to testify in front of both the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, which was the starting point of two years of nonstop work and changes to appease lawmakers and regulators.

By spring of 2021 (yes they slow played us at every step), we had addressed every last possible regulatory concern across financial crime, money laundering, consumer protection, reserve management, buffers, and so much more, and we were ready to launch.

We had worked on a slow rollout of a limited pilot that some members of the Fed’s Board of Governors were supportive of. At last, Chair Jay Powell was ready to let us move forward in a limited way. The story, as I heard it, is that Jay Powell was told by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at one of their biweekly meetings that allowing this project to move forward was “political suicide,” and she would not have his back if he let it happen. I wasn’t in the room when this conversation happened, so take these words with a grain of salt, but effectively this was the moment Libra was killed.

Shortly thereafter, the Fed organized calls with all the participating banks, and the Fed’s general counsel read a prepared statement to each of them, saying: “We can’t stop you from moving forward and launching, but we are not comfortable with you doing so.” And just like that, it was over.

One essential point is worth making here. There was no legal or regulatory angle left for the government or regulators to kill the project. It was 100% a political kill—one that was executed through intimidation of captive banking institutions. That was the hardest part of this story for me personally. Not that we had failed, but that America, this country I immigrated to and became a proud citizen of because of its rule of law and value system, behaved in such a way for political reasons. It was a very tough pill to swallow.

The bright side of the story, though, was the many learnings from this wild ride. By the end of the project, we had made so many concessions to get a thumbs-up that the whole design of the network became a Frankenstein of our initial ambitions.

We also learned the biggest lesson of all, which is that if you’re trying to build an open money grid for the world—eventually moving trillions of dollars a day, designed to be here 100 years from now—you have to build it on the most neutral, decentralized, unassailable network and asset, which, hands down, is Bitcoin.

And now this is what many of us who went through this scarring journey are building together at @Lightspark. And this time, we won’t stop until we get it done!

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Umm

[Andrew Tate @Cobratate]

I promised that each time MicroStrategy buys BTC I will buy 1million USD of BTC.

I am a brokey who cant match his buys, and I already have 100's of Ms in bitcoin, which is far more than ill ever need.

But for the culture.

EVERY TIME he buys, Ill buy 1M USD more BTC.