MARKET MOVERS
- Amazon wins bid for Champions League Football. The company won the rights to live-stream European Champions League soccer matches on its Prime Video service for its U.K. subscribers for the first time, a move that plunges the e-commerce giant deeper into sports broadcasting. The one-game-a-week screening starts from the 2024-25 season and will go on for three seasons.
- Crypto broker Voyager Digital suspends all trading, deposits, and withdrawals. The digital asset brokerage is pausing all customers and temporarily suspending customer trading, deposits, and withdrawals, according to a statement released Friday afternoon. The decision is designed to give the firm additional time to continue “exploring strategic alternatives with various interested parties”. Read more here.
- Berkshire Hathaway owns 17.4% of Occidental Petroleum after new buys. The company continued to buy more shares of Occidental Petroleum in recent days, purchasing a total of about $580 million of stock on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. That lifted its stake in the large energy company to $9.9 billion, according to a filing late Friday. Read more here.
- Three Arrows Capital files for Chapter 15 bankruptcy. The crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy, a move that protects its US assets while a liquidation is carried out in the British Virgin Islands. Representatives for Three Arrows filed the bankruptcy petition in New York on Friday, court papers show.
- Institutional leverage is being unwound in this crypto crash. The number of addresses with more than one bitcoin is at an all-time high. This shows that the average bitcoin investor is not panicking and is actually stacking. It's the institutions with leverage that are being unwound. It's a classic case of trying to find the safest arbitrage and levering up but it ends up being the opposite. Source(40:48)
- Robinhood just added Chainlink. Cryptocurrency LINK was added to the growing number of cryptocurrencies on the platform. The company last expanded its crypto listings in April, when it added support for Compound, Polygon, Solana, and Shiba Inu. The move falls in line with recent comments from co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev, who said Robinhood aims to become the "most trusted and easiest-to-use crypto platform." Read more here.
WHAT TO WATCH
- Financial markets rout is only halfway through, says 'The Big Short’ investor Michael Burry. Burry, who runs hedge fund Scion Asset Management, said the losses in stocks in the first half of the year have mostly been a result of multiple compression. He said corporations will see an earnings decline next, weighing further on asset prices. Read more here.
- FTX signs a deal giving it the option to buy crypto lender BlockFi. It gives it the option to buy the lender at a maximum price of $240 million. The company did not provide a minimum price. FTX also upped its prior loan of $250 million to $400 million. It comes as one of BlockFi’s counterparties, hedge fund Three Arrows Capital falls into liquidation, and crypto’s bear market causes more casualties.
- Biden opens the possibility of more offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The Biden administration released a five-year plan on Friday that would block all new offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans while allowing some drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the south coast of Alaska. The proposed plan, which has not been finalized, could allow up to 11 lease sales over the next five years. Read more here.
- The last remnant of Facebook’s crypto project shuts down on September 1. Meta announced Friday that it’s shuttering its digital wallet, Novi, on Sept. 1. The move comes amid a broad downturn in the cryptocurrency market and new scrutiny on stablecoins. It’s the last remnant of the Diem project, formerly known as Libra, that Facebook kicked off some years ago.
- Zoom is looking to expand outside of video conferencing. The company is reportedly going into chat and making persistent chat part of the product. With this new feature, the chats that were sent to video participants during a zoom video call will still exist even after the call ended. This will make Zoom a full-fledged messaging app in addition to video conferencing. Source(54:54)
