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March 1st - This Week in Alternative Investments
Adam Katz
March 01, 2024
This issue is brought to you by Energy Shares, where you can invest in clean energy opportunities like solar farms.
Headlines
Bite-sized market updates
A record-setting case of hockey cards
Bitcoin shot past $60,000
Stripe’s value keeps increasing
Auction sales for women artists hit a new-high
Plus: Card grading company consolidation, Ethereum ETFs, housing prices, and more.
Performance
Bitcoin | Rare Whiskey Apex 1000 Index |
Thomson-Reuters VC Index | S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index |
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Market Updates
An unopened case of 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards sold for $3.72 million. This is the set that includes hockey legend Wayne Gretzky’s rookie card, making it the most sought after of any hockey cards ever produced. This particular case is the only known one to exist and was only found recently among other boxes in storage in Saskatchewan. The case has 16 boxes that contain 48 packs each. In the same auction, a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle graded PSA 8.5 sold for $2.37 million, a 18x gain from its previous sale for $154,700 in 2010. Both sales speak to the power of rare items to achieve strong results even in an otherwise down market.
Bitcoin’s price continues to rise, surpassing $60,000 for the first time since 2021. This comes only about two weeks since it hit the $50,000 mark, showing how rapidly the price has grown. Since Bitcoin ETFs were launched in January, its price has risen by nearly 30%. The price gains feed into themselves, as growing hype builds demand, evidenced by the record inflows the ETFs are seeing. With the upcoming “halving” making it more difficult to mine and restricting supply, many are anticipating a further price surge. However, this anticipation is part of what is fueling this price growth, and there is a chance that people will “sell the news” when the halving occurs.
Payments processor Stripe is now valued at $65 billion after an employee stock sale. This represents a 30% gain since last March, when the company raised a Series A at a valuation of $50 billion. While it does represent a decline from a $95 billion valuation in 2021, the upward trajectory could point it towards a long-awaited IPO. Until then, secondary shares of the company have been in high demand, with a secondary sale in January of this year valuing the company at $53.65 billion, meaning investors have already seen a 20% gain on paper. This new valuation is likely to raise demand for Stripe’s secondary shares even further.
Sales at auction for women artists hit an all-time high of $825.8 million in 2023. This represents a 7% rise from 2022, and represents 13.8% of all auction sales. While the average price realized for women artists was 37% less than for men, that gap also narrowed in 2023. However, women artists made up 70% of the under-30 “ultra-contemporary” market, and the average price realized was nearly 3x that of men under 30, a sure sign of a market shift. This is an important factor to consider for anyone who is considering investing into contemporary art.
Smart Humans Podcast
Slava Rubin talks with CoinFund's Jake Brukhman about investing into web3, picking Layer 1s, and finding opportunities in today's markets.
Explore
More stories worth checking out
PSA is acquiring rival SGC (Gemrate)
Collectors, the parent of the #1 card-grading company PSA, is acquiring SGC, the #3 card grading company, furthering its hold on the hobby, though SGC will continue to operate independently for now.
With Bitcoin prices popping after its ETFs launched, the question is when Ethereum ETFs will arrive, but the SEC is likely to take its time before approving them, which could give investors more time to enter the market before a potential pop in price.
Different indices are showing different numbers, but they all agree that U.S. house prices were up in 2023 - the FHFA House Price Index has a 6.5% gain, the CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index says 5.5%, and Redfin says 5.8%.
The Swedish fintech company Klarna, once Europe’s most valuable startup, is aiming for a $20 billion IPO later this year, up from its valuation of $6.7 billion in 2022, but down from its $45.6 billion valuation in 2021.
Opaque valuations in the private credit market have some questioning how reliable the $1.7 trillion market actually is, as lenders can take advantage of the lack of transparency to keep values artificially high.
Prices fell significantly at the annual Premiere Napa Valley wine auction - down to an average of $195/bottle, a 32% decrease from last year.
Gemini, the crypto exchange run by the Winklevoss twins, agreed to return $1.1 billion that was tied up in its defunct Gemini Earn program, great news for customers who have been waiting over a year to be made whole.
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