Emergency Xmas Gift Ideas: My Two Books

This is graceless shilling, but if I don’t shill for myself — who the hell will?

Two small accomplishments of mine in 2017 was self-publishing two stories, one about my rise in the brokerage business and another my fall — all happening during the dot com era. If you’ve been reading me for a while, be prepared for a different style of writing with these, as I delved out of my comfort zone and into dialogue and my personal life.

All of the events mentioned happened, some at different times and names were changed to preserve secrecy; but I think they’d make fine gifts for anyone in the business or thinking about it or anyone who likes to read English at a very high level.

I intended to write three parts to this story — but I’m afraid I’ll be too busy getting my advisory business off the ground in 2018 I won’t get around to doing part 3 for quite some time. In the meantime, read parts 1 and 2. I recommend paperback in order to attain the RARE art.

Part 1: In a Car Made of Dynamite, Racing Towards the Sun
Part 2: Journey into Fear

When I saw LFIN’s description, I’d knew it’d be a runner. Naturally, I didn’t think it’d run 10x in 1 day, from $11 to $129; but alas we learn new things every single day. Don’t we now?

I’ve had some outrageous success playing these crypto proxies because this is up my wheelhouse. I am a researcher, avid fan of equities, and I love finding new ideas; plus I have balls of steel. When markets trend, I get bored and sometimes do poorly because I hate conforming. But if you place me in the midst of a mega-trend that’s happening in real time, I will out-trade all of you fuckers combined.

Enough about me. Let’s move onto my next pick, which eerily has all of the trimmings that made LFIN so interesting.

I bought GSUM today, a Chinese company with their filthy hands deep in AI bullshit and now MUH Blockchain.

Gridsum Holding Inc. (“Gridsum” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: GSUM), a leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and enterprise focused artificial intelligence (“AI”) solutions in China, today announced that it has launched its AI-driven, Software as a Service (“SaaS”), Intelligent CRM Solution for the China market. The Intelligent CRM Solution is a cloud-based, marketing-centric CRM solution tailor-made for both multinational and local companies operating in China. The solution leverages Gridsum’s expertise in big data analytics and AI, combining Gridsum’s “best of breed” marketing technology with leading sales intelligence technologies spanning multiple customer devices and integrating with key social networking platforms. The solution will also leverage Blockchain technologies in a number of specific areas going forward. It sets Gridsum apart from its competitors in a China SaaS CRM market expected to grow from an estimated RMB5.59 billion (US$0.85 billion) in 2017 to an estimated RMB15.1 billion (US$2.28 billion) by 2020[1], representing a CAGR of 39.3%. Mr. Guosheng Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Gridsum, commented, “We are excited to launch our Intelligent CRM Solution after substantial research, development and real world operation. As the number of online and offline points of contact with consumers multiply, it has become infinitely more difficult for companies to identify and win potential customers in the most efficient manner.

As Chinese consumers increasingly embrace ‘new retail’, our solution will help our clients to automate and, through machine learning, efficiently acquire, develop and manage both potential and existing customers through a variety of activities. By converging a client’s business intelligence data with Gridsum Prophet and our marketing automation suite, we will be able to substantially drive sales efficiency with significant, immediate and quantifiable KPI enhancement for our clients. The market opportunity in China for marketing-centric CRM solutions is huge given the proliferation of mobile devices, the deep penetration that social media networks have, and the emergence of a new era of retail. The development of this product is another step in our strategy to leverage our core platform and capabilities into other areas of our clients’ organizations, and to cross-sell and upsell our existing products and services to create greater value for clients.” Leveraging Gridsum’s core competency and competitive advantages in big data analytics and AI, the Company combined cutting edge marketing and sales intelligence technology to create a CRM solution that specifically caters to enterprises operating in China. Both multinational companies and leading local companies in China have tended to use process-centric, system-heavy, legacy on-premises CRM systems that focus on tracking historical client contacts rather than leveraging advanced cloud-based solutions that are marketing-centric and focus on driving sales. This creates a substantial market opportunity for Gridsum which has already begun to cross-market and upsell the solution to its impressive existing portfolio of marketing automation and other clients.

Gridsum’s Intelligent CRM Solution allows its clients to leverage both online and offline data derived from their digital marketing and sales divisions and customers’ digital footprints, to drive sales and close orders in a more efficient and KPI-enhancing manner. The solution leverages Gridsum’s AI Engine, the “Gridsum Prophet”, and its marketing automation suite, as well as Gridsum’s deep experience in seamlessly interfacing its marketing automation suite with its clients’ sales infrastructure and systems, to create a ground breaking and tailor-made marketing-centric CRM solution for the China market. Gridsum’s Intelligent CRM solution will allow clients to automate and increase sales efficiency across their entire businesses by marketing to individual customers rather than broader demographics. The solution is designed and optimized as a powerful and complete standalone CRM solution. It also has advanced “plug and play” dynamics allowing it to seamlessly integrate with a client’s legacy systems where necessary. With machine learning, Gridsum’s clients will be able to automate the identification, prioritization and “valuation” of promising leads and relationships and sort through massive amounts of data related to multiple areas of their business – from marketing and sales, to loyalty programs, e-commerce, promotions, and more – to easily track customers throughout the different stages of the customer lifecycle.

By seamlessly integrating multiple social platforms, Gridsum clients will also be able to create a “social map” of their customers’ professional and social networks, matching this to their own organizations, to further drive the sales process. Additionally, Gridsum’s Intelligent CRM Solution will increasingly leverage key Blockchain technology features going forward to: accelerate and automate the often cumbersome contractual processes associated with sales and customer support; facilitate customer loyalty program modules built into the solution; support our clients’ ecommerce; and integrate over the longer term into corporate ERP systems to effectively turn the supply chain into a “demand chain” profit center. This distinguishes Gridsum as an early mover and pioneer in this area in the China market. The company expects these features to grow in importance as the use of blockchain technology becomes more widespread in the China market and globally.

In other words, this is a software company using social trends to help retailers navigate. Now they added a new buzzword to the pastiche: Blockchain.

How can we go wrong?

The stock is barely up on this news. I expect a small move up to $18 on more crypto related developments.

Morning lads,

Been a bit busy priming the old money machine to spit out more, err, money. I’ve got NXTD spiking higher by a genteel 70% this morning on some crypto related news, in addition to a Maxim Group report with a $5 target on it.

Fit Pay, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of NXT-ID, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTD) and Cascade Financial Technology Corp (Cascade FinTech) today announced an agreement for the joint development of a platform that gives cryptocurrency holders the ability to use the value of their currency to make purchases at millions of retail locations worldwide. The new platform will enable devices with stored value exchanged from cryptocurrency to be used for traditional payment transactions.

“As cryptocurrencies increase in value and distribution, the need to create new methods to monetize their value and enabling models for acceptance is the critical last mile,” said Michael Orlando, COO of NXT-ID and President of Fit Pay, Inc. “Our development effort with Cascade seeks to connect cryptocurrencies to the payment ecosystem as a natural extension of FitPay’s platform. It will give cryptocurrency holders the opportunity to effortlessly use their value to make purchases every day, just as they would use a credit or debit card, and transform the way people pay.”

Under the agreement, which is an extension of a current relationship between FitPay and Cascade, the two companies will collaborate to create a platform that seamlessly transfers cryptocurrency value into widely accepted forms of payment and stores that value on devices capable of making contactless payments. This will give cryptocurrency holders the ability to make transactions with value derived from cryptocurrency at any near field communication-enabled point of sale terminals.

“Cryptocurrencies are becoming a more common way of storing and transferring value, so there is a tremendous need to enable that value to be used to purchase goods and services,” said Cascade FinTech Founder and Chief Executive Officer Spencer Schmerling. “Our collaboration with FitPay will create a platform that does just that – connecting cryptocurrency to the mainstream economy in a whole new way.”

“As a security technology company, our mission to protect users, data and transmissions is very relevant to the emergence of cryptocurrencies and blockchain in general,” Gino Pereira CEO of NXT-ID said. “As such, we are working on ways that we can add value to this emerging space and this partnership is the first of anticipated future offerings from the company.”

And Via Maxim Group:

We believe FitPay is working on similar agreements with other Australian banks. In addition FitPay is collaborating with 15 OEMs that are integrating its’ payments platform into their devices, such as the case with the latest release of the Garmin (GRMN – $58.84 – NR) smart watch with payments capabilities. According to a survey from MasterCard (MA – $152.40 – NR), 82% of Australian consumer make a contactless payment each week, but much fewer use mobile contactless payments. The survey also indicates that there is still room for growth in terms of mobile contactless payment services including Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. Just 26% of consumers are aware of having contactless payment options on their phones, and even among these only 28% use mobile contactless payments weekly. Reiterate Buy rating and price target of $5. Our price target is based on a 10-year DCF assuming a 23% discount rate. NXTD is in the process of cleaning up its balance sheet and at the same time striking what appears to be lucrative deals that will establish its technology for the wearable payments sector. We believe the biggest near-term catalyst is activation of payments capabilities on the new Garmin smart watch in 1H18. However, new product launches in Australia using FitPay’s technology could be another catalyst in 2018.

Stay tuned for my next pick.

Here’s an old man who’s shorting GBTC and RIOT.

Why is he shorting them?

He’s upset that GBTC is trading 85% above its NAV, declaring if people could get short, ”it’d drop a thousand points tomorrow’, casting the recent price gains aside as being ‘ridiculous.’

With regard to RIOT Blockchain, which recently changed its name from Bioptix to capitalize on the crypto fervor. Left chalks them up as opportunists, marketeers operating out of Boca Raton and Canada, trying to get rich by pretending to have a notable crypto business.

Left thinks RIOT will plunge to under $10 and is shorting it via options.

This is the new scheme, finding out who Coinbase will anoint next. It’s worth noting, iBC’s Coinspeak has been feverishly recommending purchase of Bitcoin cash for months and has made small fortunes in this vehicle, enough money not to care about the opinions of the unwashed working class outside the castle gates.

Bitcoin cash is now +65%, sporting a market cap of $61 billion, now only a rounding error of $12 billion away from the number 2 crypto-currency — Ethereum.

Via Coinbase:

Coinbase operates by the principle that our customers should benefit to the greatest extent possible from forks or other networks events. This is essential in our mission to make Coinbase the most trusted, safe, and easy-to-use digital currency exchange.

Bitcoin Cash was created by a fork on August 1st, 2017. All customers who held a Bitcoin balance on Coinbase at the time of the fork will now see an equal balance of Bitcoin Cash available in their Coinbase account. Your Bitcoin Cash balance will reflect your Bitcoin balance at the time of the Bitcoin Cash Fork, which occurred at 13:20 UTC, August 1, 2017. You can read more about what a bitcoin fork is here and our previous update on Bitcoin Cash here.

We have been monitoring the Bitcoin Cash network over the last few months and have decided to enable full support including the ability to buy, sell, send and receive. Factors we considered include developer and community support, security, stability, market price and trading volume. You can learn more about Bitcoin Cash here.

We will abbreviate Bitcoin Cash as BCH on our platform. Customers will be able to buy Bitcoin Cash using all of our supported fiat currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD and SGD.

Who’s next?

Other notable alt-coins showing unusual pin acton include:

Augur +49%
Bitcoin Gold +25%
Raiblocks +13%
IOTA +12%

Sky People Fruit Juice closed +64% to $3, down from an intra-day high $5 (+200%) on news of now being a crypto play. Don’t laugh; I’m deadly serious.

Traders on Twitter were quick to link the company to blockchain technology and the bitcoin craze, since Future FinTech announced in June it had changed its name from “SkyPeople Fruit Juice” to focus on financial technology.

However, there is no mention of “blockchain,” “bitcoin” or anything crypto-related in the release or the company’s November presentation to investors. The documents show the company intends to focus on commodities trading and e-commerce platforms, given its background in agricultural goods.

David Rudnick, Future FinTech’s investor relations representative, had no comment.

Trading volume topped 7 million shares, versus the 30-day average of about 248,000 shares, according to FactSet.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday suspended trading in shares of The Crypto Co. until early January due to concerns that included potential stock manipulation. When contacted by CNBC, the company had yet to provide a statement by Tuesday afternoon.

Everyone is a crypto play now. iBankCoin will now begin accepting payments for Exodus in Bitcoins. On this morsel of news, I expect the value of my website to soar.

The Crypto company ran from $3 to $600+ this year, prompting me to delve into the company, revealing some things that raised an eyebrow. Immediately following my blog, which has since been taken down, I got a letter from an attorney representing the company demanding a cease and desist for defaming his client. Since it was published on both iBC and Zerohedge, both sites received this letter.

Since I had no skin in the game and didn’t really give a shit about CRCW one way or another, I took down the posts and went on with my life trading crypto proxy stocks just like CRCW.

This morning the SEC halted its shares until January 3rd, citing chicanery.

Via SEC:

The Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) announced the temporary suspension, pursuant to Section 12(k) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”), of trading in the securities of The Crypto Company (“CRCW”), of Malibu, California at 9:30 a.m. EST on December 19, 2017, and terminating at 11:59 p.m. EST on January 3, 2018.

The Commission temporarily suspended trading in the securities of The Crypto Company because of concerns regarding the accuracy and adequacy of information in the marketplace about, among other things, the compensation paid for promotion of the company, and statements in Commission filings about the plans of the company’s insiders to sell their shares of The Crypto Company’s common stock. Questions have also arisen concerning potentially manipulative transactions in the company’s stock in November 2017. This order was entered pursuant to Section 12(k) of the Exchange Act.

The Commission cautions broker-dealers, shareholders, and prospective purchasers that they should carefully consider the foregoing information along with all other currently available information and any information subsequently issued by the company.

Further, brokers and dealers should be alert to the fact that, pursuant to Rule 15c2-11 under the Exchange Act, at the termination of the trading suspension, no quotation may be entered unless and until they have strictly complied with all of the provisions of the rule. If any broker or dealer has any questions as to whether or not he has complied with the rule, he should not enter any quotation but immediately contact the staff in the Division of Trading and Markets, Office of Interpretation and Guidance, at (202) 551-5777. If any broker or dealer is uncertain as to what is required by Rule 15c2-11, he should refrain from entering quotations relating to The Crypto Company’s securities until such time as he has familiarized himself with the rule and is certain that all of its provisions have been met.

If any broker or dealer enters any quotation which is in violation of the rule, the Commission will consider the need for prompt enforcement action. If any broker-dealer or other person has any information which may relate to this matter, contact Katharine Zoladz, Assistant Regional Director, Los Angeles Regional Office, at (323) 965-3998 or Roberto A. Tercero, Senior Counsel, Los Angeles Regional Office, at (323) 965-3891. The Commission appreciates the assistance of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and OTC Markets Group, Inc.

Perhaps they’ll have their attorneys write the SEC a nice little letter now, demanding that they unhalt the stock and permit CRCW trade into the tens of billions in market cap?

Current market cap is $10.6 billion, run by a gent with 10 disclosures on his U4. I’ll leave it there.

Other stocks in the space are getting hit too, all for different reasons. With elevated share prices comes secondaries and other forms of capital raises, something I was afraid of, which is one of the reasons why I sold several of my proxies yesterday.

Here is some of the carnage.

DSS -23%
LFIN -11%
PYDS -8.6%
DPW -8%
XNET -7%
MARA -6%
SIEB -6%
SRAX -5%

On the plus side is MGTI +6%, NXTD +23%, RIOT +12%, OTIV +11%, TEUM +8% and CLNT +6%.

What kind of world do we live in now, where there are people out there presiding over hedge funds +25,000% thanks to his ‘early’ investments in Bitcoins? I’d like to say ‘no one saw this coming’, but it simply isn’t true. There have been a dedicated gaggle of crypt-nerds religiously buying BTC sub $100. Funny thing, I was even thinking about buying it after Mt Gox blew up, but opted against it because I suddenly lost the verve necessary to purchase something that, at the time, I had no idea what it was about.

Enter the Pantera Bitcoin Fund — the biggest dick swingers in the universe.

The fund — one of the first in the world to dedicate itself to virtual currencies — released its returns in a letter sent to investors on Tuesday. The figure for the life of the fund, which was set up in 2013, is eye popping: 25,004 percent.

A significant portion of the gains have come this year, thanks to the skyrocketing price of an individual Bitcoin, which hit $19,000 on Monday. (The fund’s 25,004 percent figure was actually counted back when Bitcoin was at $15,500, a week ago.)

For comparison, the top performing hedge fund in the world last year returned 148 percent, according to Preqin, a hedge fund tracker. Since 2013, the Pantera Bitcoin Fund’s compound annual returns have been around 250 percent.

The Pantera Bitcoin Fund did not have to do much to get those returns. It just bought Bitcoins and held them as the price went up. Its performance is a reminder of the unprecedented gains that Bitcoin has experienced, with some analysts arguing that Bitcoin’s moves have been even greater than the movements of Dutch tulip bulb prices back in the 1600s.

But Dan Morehead, who founded Pantera Capital and the fund after a career at Goldman Sachs, said it was not an easy decision to create a Bitcoin-focused hedge fund in 2013, when Bitcoin was primarily known as a currency for online drug markets.

“The first hard part was actually deciding to launch a cryptocurrency fund when everyone else thought that was crazy,” he said on Monday.

Many of the investors in the Pantera fund have not enjoyed its full 25,004 percent return. Some bought in at the beginning and then sold out when Bitcoin’s price was in a slow steady decline during 2014 and 2015. Others bought in during the current boom and have reaped only the returns that Bitcoin has experienced over the last year. Those still aren’t bad, at around 1,900 percent.

Those gains have given Pantera a lot of competition. More than 150 hedge funds focused on virtual currencies have been created this year, bringing the total number of such funds to 175, according to the research firm Autonomous Next.

I would imagine these guys are kicking ass, since they made all of their clients so much money, right? Wrong. You underestimate the fucked up nature that is inherent in the human race.

Pantera estimated that in dollar terms, the fund has made $2.1 billion for its investors. Investors have taken out Bitcoins worth around $1.7 billion to hold for themselves, to avoid paying Pantera’s 0.75 percent annual fees. That has left Pantera holding coins worth $400 million. Overall, investors originally put about $150 million into the fund.

A visionary lead his investors to a mountain of gold, only to be kicked down a crevasse by ingrates who wanted all of the gold for themselves.

The manlets in Europe have produced a flat market today. Color me unsurprised, especially since they’re all a bunch of Krampus loving faggots. Here in the states, we embrace Santa Claus and Coca-Cola, and we buy stocks into the biggest shopping season of the year — because we have excess wealth and do not know what to do with it.

LFIN is down 17% after the CEO’s disastrous interview on CNBC. If I was a CEO of a company whose stock just went up 5,000%, I’d keep very silent, like a mouse, eating morsels of cheese, trying to keep that shit elevated as long as I could. It is the job of the CEO to increase shareholder value, no matter the case. That gent at LFIN is guilty of crimes against capitalism.

It looks like we’re getting some more action crypto proxy space this morning. My little NXTD is higher by 40%; thank you very much.

Here are some other headlines, as future hit +50 for the morning session.

Ulta Beauty upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Buckingham Research

Pareteum Corporation (TEUM) announces that it has paid its lender $8.1 million, the remaining balance of its senior secured loan from Atalaya Capital Management and Corbin Capital (“Lenders”).

Nxt-ID subsidiary Fit Pay & Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZBY) reach agreement to extend contactless payment capabilities to a range of new devices (1.59)
The agreement enables ANZ cardholders to make secure contactless payments at NFC-enabled point-of-sale locations directly from Internet of Things and wearable devices that are integrated with the FitPay payment platform.

Jack In The Box to sell Qdoba Restaurant Corporation to Apollo Global (APO) for $305 mln in cash (shares halted)

They will play this interview in Harvard’s Business School program for centuries to come on what exactly not to do and saying during a nationally televised interview.

Longfin CEO makes a good case for short sellers: 'We do not deserve this market cap." $LFIN pic.twitter.com/OEmIU3yHTC

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) December 19, 2017

It started off all well and good. Then about 2-3mins in, the poor CEO of Longfin, Venkat Meenavalli, got TRIGGERED and started to deride his own stock, saying they ‘didn’t deserve’ the present market cap, which apexed at over $5 billion. He hedged his derision by saying he’d lock in his shares for 3 years and didn’t have any intentions of selling because his company was profitable and because he’s a ‘shadow banking guy’, declaring it to be a market valued at an absurd $72 trillion.

This all came about when CNBC’s Brian Kelly questioned his acquisition of crypto company Ziddu — just two days after IPOing, a company that he owns.

Grab a bag of popped corn and watch this absolute train wreck of an interview and try not to choke on those little niblets as they traverse down your trachea.

Shares of LFIN plunged by 14% following this interview.