Social Media Spotlight: 12/22/2021
Happy Holidays!
Serving you up one final collection of social media callouts before the end of the year. As a reminder – inclusions of Social Media Spotlights don’t necessarily receive my full ‘endorsement’ or complete analytical agreement. We are simply sharing information that hopefully aid your journey as a business person, market reader, and investor.
Let’s jump in!
Topics include:
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Tax the rich?
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Miami’s bitcoin mayor
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The green energy transition
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New major player enters the NFT space
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Chainlink hype
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Understanding the Fed’s moves
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Rivian’s hilariously low revenue
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College NIL deals
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Airpods revenue
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Spider-Man
For those wondering, I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2021
Funny enough, I made a TikTok video breaking down exactly what Musk will pay in taxes. About an hour before posting it, he shot out this tweet (*face palm*). My math came out to about $11.4 billion in taxes – so it’s safe to say this checks out.
Elon Musk exercised 2,151,940 shares from his 2012 CEO compensation plan and then sold 934,091 shares (which pays for a portion of his 53% tax rate on the exercised shares).
— Dave Lee (@heydave7) December 17, 2021
I think Elon is doing selling shares until at least Jan 28, 2022. Will explain in this thread. pic.twitter.com/Fv9pwo0tUZ
While I won’t be posting this video anymore, above is a helpful thread to understand what a CEO of Musk’s caliber goes through to exercise his trades.
The top 10% already pay 71% of federal income tax. Don’t just spout talking points, actually look into the numbers. @SenWarren and @SenSanders are lying to you. pic.twitter.com/2Z40LvOORa
— Leo and Boone (@ridge747) December 20, 2021
Finally, I wanted to include this to address the “tax the rich” narrative. They’re taxed in the US as high as (if not higher than) anywhere in the world. They just aren’t always paying hundreds of millions or billions in taxes annually because that money isn’t yet entering their bank accounts / trusts / holding companies.
MONSTER can’t miss 🧵 on MIAMI from my @VentureMiami Team!!!! It IS a MOVEMENT 👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇 https://t.co/pp5AnII16M
— Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) December 20, 2021
🚨2 Huge Announcements: $1000 in $BTC to the young men from @5000rolemodels who visited City Hall & a donation from my office of $100k to the organization itself! This is only the beginning of how we transform Miami into the Capital of Tech, Crypto and Capital! pic.twitter.com/Uzium20MXh
— Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) December 20, 2021
Is there a better mayor in the country?
Average U.S. Winter Energy Costs
— Daniel Turner (@DanielTurnerPTF) December 16, 2021
Gas customer: $572
Electric customer: $1,209
New Yorkers face a 111% increase in heating costs thanks to NYC Democrats banning natural gas.
https://t.co/KJQbBRzo0Y pic.twitter.com/6cSTGVNmw0
— Kyla Scanlon (@kylascan) December 16, 2021
As someone that’s never been overly invested in energy sectors, I’m making it a goal in 2022 to be more intentional about learning more. My hunch is that both private and public sector entities are jumping the gun on 100% electric energy initiatives — which can lead to a rough transition filled with unintended consequences.
Trust me, I’m all about the renewables. But, it seems a bit outlandish to label non-renewables as the devil.
Use Shopify for your NFT dropshttps://t.co/sZwjLZetoU
— tobi.eth (@tobi) December 16, 2021
As you may have seen in Tuesday’s post about Adidas and Nike entering the NFT / metaverse / Web 3.0 world – this space is accelerating quickly.
What an interesting opportunity here for Shopify (SHOP). My hunch is that more and more Shopify hosted businesses will begin to tap into this new marketplace as a means for generating revenue at scale.
Remember, Shopify’s network of sellers moves more GMV online than any other organization — beside Amazon. This to me means there’s a massive opportunity when NFT utilization evolves beyond “images” but into “experiences” as I predict it will in the coming years.
Chainlink HYPE!
#Chainlink saw unprecedented adoption in Q3 of this year.
— Chainlink – Official Channel (@chainlink) November 11, 2021
With over 250 new projects now #PoweredByChainlink—from top dApps to data providers, node operators, and enterprises—the #blockchain ecosystem is realizing the power of oracles for unlocking smart contract innovation. pic.twitter.com/4DjyJS45kV
1/ I want to give some perspective on the economics of #Chainlink services, both in their existing form today and how it will evolve into the future
— ChainLinkGod.eth 2.0 (@ChainLinkGod) December 13, 2021
This includes many nuances regarding user fees, cost-efficiency, network subsidies, economies of scale, and sustainability
🧵
Always like tossing in a helpful post or two about one of my favorite investments of all time – Chainlink (LINK).
I have the utmost conviction that oracle providers are a critical piece of the equation for the future of finance, data feeds, insurance, and pretty much anything you can imagine.
No, I don’t know what the price of LINK will be in a year. Yes, I believe the price of LINK will be very high in 5 years.
"Despite everything else that’s happened over the past year, Fed officials haven’t changed their targets for real output or employment at all…they are saying that they will tolerate the additional inflation for the sake of their other priorities." https://t.co/yJrJMgvhX6
— Matthew C. Klein (@M_C_Klein) December 16, 2021
In the most recent Week in Review, we gave a concise breakdown of the Fed’s most recent activity. If you want to learn more about interest rates, tapering, and all the other fun things that impact your life more than you may think – the above link may help.
Rivian’s (RIVN) Hilariously Low Revenue:
From Rivian's shareholder letter. Yes, that's a "1." For $1 million in revenue…for the whole quarter.
— Tim Stenovec (@timsteno) December 17, 2021
(Before today's selloff, it had a market cap of nearly $100 billion.)https://t.co/zjlCH9JnQT pic.twitter.com/BaEd45qS1Y
Also included an earnings recap of Rivian in the last Week in Review. This company is a complete roll of the dice — despite that, I’d love the opportunity to drive their Rivian RS1.
College NIL Deals:
Yesterday: A group of SMU alumni unveil plans to contribute at least $1 million annually to a NIL fund tied to the football team.
— Joseph Hoyt (@JoeJHoyt) December 16, 2021
Today: https://t.co/z3NVE3ubxy
Many of you likely love college sports (Go Vols) and many of you may not give a damn. Regardless of your fandom (or lack thereof), I encourage you to pay attention to what’s going on with Name, Image, & Likeness (NIL) deals.
College athletes finally have the well-deserved ability to make money as their personal audience grows. I believe this will be a very big space for years to come – causing the intersection between major corporations and college athletics to grow in importance.
As you all might have seen on my Instagram stories — a company I’ve invested into personally, Draftly, is making waves at the intersection of NIL and NFTs. They’ve officially hired ex-NCAA & NFL employees to help move the ball forward, and I’m thrilled.
If this is something any of you are curious about — or maybe you know a college athlete thinking about NIL, reply to this email and I’ll add more color.
🍎 AirPods Revenue:
Airpods do more in revenue than Spotify, Twitter, Shopify and Snapchat combined pic.twitter.com/fK726eHH3H
— Austen Allred (@Austen) December 15, 2021
Go ahead and start selling little NFTs of AirPods and let’s see how high that number can fly, Apple. But on a real note – this is insane to wrap your mind around.
So what’s next for Apple? I believe additional hardware that will be as integral to our daily lives as AirPods are today. According to a few analysts on the Street, most speculation right now is surrounding a headset / something ocular — enabling mass consumption of the metaverse / augmented reality.
Their hunch is that Apple will release this + some new tech in their next iPhone that encourages the use of AR / VR, but at an increased cost to the user. This increased cost will allow Apple to rake even more of their high-margin Services revenue.
🕷️ Spider-Man:
UPDATE: Top 5 Opening Days of All-Time:
— Gitesh Pandya (@GiteshPandya) December 18, 2021
$157.5M #AvengersEndgame
$121.5M #SpiderManNoWayHome
$119.1M #StarWars Force Awakens
$106.3M #Avengers Infinity War
$104.7M Star Wars Last Jedi#boxoffice #SpiderMan #NoWayHome #MCU #Marvel
Shoutout to all you WallStreetBettors — shares of AMC Entertainment (AMC) have surged +25% since last week’s release of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
My understanding is that this movie was co-produced by the studios of Disney (DIS) and Sony Group (SONY). Disney owns the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and Sony owns the Spider-Man Universe. Marvel (under Disney) owns all merchandising rights to Spider-Man, while Sony still retains the box office revenues.
However, I’m wondering if this “co-produced” movie has led to some sort of different revenue split. I may make a video about where the cash is truly flowing from a unique movie release of this nature. The news reports I’ve seen have a variety of different takes and I question the due diligence of the reporters.
In any event, the retail investors are clearly sticking up for AMC over all other parties involved. While AMC has rocketed higher, DIS is up just +1.2% over the last week and SONY is down -1.4%.
Wishing each of you a peaceful rest of your week and safe travels if you’re bouncing around for the holidays. While I may be slower to respond than usual, feel free to reach out to me via email, our texting community (615-802-9495), or Finary!
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.