Crypto stories are running hot and heavy once again, as Bitcoin and Ethereum have recovered to make new highs in recent weeks after a big slump midyear (OK, Ethereum is not quite at new highs — but it’s close)… and whenever that happens in a sector, we know the newsletter sales pitches will follow. This one looks a little familiar, it’s from Enrique Abeyta over at Empire Elite Growth (“on sale” for $2,250/yr, renews at $3,000, no refunds), but it carries an October date so let’s see if he’s pitching something new.
The implication of the promo emails is that this is a “double down” idea, here’s the pitch I got from Abeyta’s colleague Whitney Tilson via email today:
“A stock we’ve been pounding the table on just got crushed.
“It’s down to around $10 from its high of $30 earlier this year.
“And we LOVE it!
“That might sound strange, but we’re still extremely bullish on this stock…
“Which means now is an even better time to buy.
“You can load up on shares while they’re still extremely cheap right now…
“And we firmly believe this stock could easily go up anywhere from 500% to 1,000% from its current prices.
“If I were allowed to buy shares myself, I’d be backing up the truck.”
That’s similar to the original Abeyta spiel, with his line that “I almost quit my job to buy this stock.” (Not sure if the rules now apply to all the MarketWise publishers, but Stansberry/Empire editors aren’t allowed to own the stocks they recommend). So it’s presumably the same stock that Enrique Abeyta was teasing back in the Spring at higher prices, but let’s double check those new clues.
Empire Elite Growthpitches itself as a “buy and hold” newsletter for small and mid-cap growth stocks, and this is basically a teaser pitch for a “back door” play on the cryptocurrency market. That means this is a stock, not a cryptocurrency, so it can be bought and sold through ordinary brokerage accounts, which makes the whole idea a little more palatable for a lot of investors.
Here’s a little taste of the ad:
“This is the biggest, most obvious, investment opportunity I’ve uncovered in 25 years….
“First off, this company is already growing at rates we’ve almost never seen any company grow at before.
“Earlier this year, they released some truly incredible growth information. They broke their own records, pulling in 200x more revenue than they did last year….
“This company is growing at an insane pace, so it won’t be long before investors start pouring in.
“In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the stock takes off in the next couple of weeks and never looks back.
“But it’s the second reason that really makes me believe the stock could skyrocket 1,000% or more from here.
“Why?
“Because this company is unique. It’s a way for you to catch the upside of the exploding cryptocurrency market without buying a single crypto.
“If you missed out on bitcoin, this could be a way you could STILL make 1,000% gains in crypto – directly through your brokerage account.”
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That language has changed a little bit since his pitch back in May, though the FOMO upside hype is about the same, with the same implication that the shares are about to “take off and never look back.”
So what is this “backdoor?” Abeyta says it’s a way to “bet on the entire crypto market with one ‘click’ of your mouse” ….
“One of the biggest crypto brokers out there is a company called Coinbase.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s the biggest and most popular crypto exchange in the United States, and it just went public recently.
“Coinbase is the third-largest digital exchange in the world.
“But the ‘back door’ I’m talking about today is not Coinbase. It’s something potentially even better.
“It’s an exchange similar to Coinbase, but with some critical differences.”
And he drops a few numbers and other details that we can feed to the Thinkolotor…
“In late 2019, it had just $5 million in assets under management. Today, it has more than $5 billion. That’s 1,000x growth in less than two years!
“Aside from that, I look at how many people are using the actual service.
“Last December, this company had fewer than 40,000 verified users, as the service was still relatively secret.
“But once word got out, things really took off.
“By the end of January, 250,000 new users had signed up.
“Today, they have more than 2 million users.”
He also refers to this company as the “Robinhood of Crypto” … and that it also has another angle: it pays interest to customers…
“This company pays its customers interest on their deposits, just like Wells Fargo or Bank of America.
“Today, it’s was paying customers as high as 12% interest.
“You heard that right: 12% interest in a world where the national interest rate on savings accounts is 0.04%.”
And a little more before we turn those clues over to the Thinkolator…
“The company I’m so excited about today is bending over backwards to avoid any nasty legal surprises.
“In fact, it’s actually the only fully regulated crypto brokerage in the United States.
“It’s fully licensed in 49 states and even owns a FINRA broker/dealer for security tokens and derivatives.”
What’s that one state that hasn’t licensed this brokerage? Interestingly, it’s New York… home to, whaddya know, Wall Street and pretty much all the biggest brokerage companies. That doesn’t seem like a coincidence.
And Abeyta thinks both that they’ll rise with their next earnings update, and rise more dramatically in the long term…
“The company is going to announce its quarterly earnings soon.
“The stock could soar on this news and potentially never look back….
“The CEO has already announced that he expects the company to have $20 billion under management by 2025…
“With earnings, we’re potentially looking at massive growth in the short term.
“And if the CEO is right, we’re going to see even more massive growth over the long term.
“On top of that, I expect the company will be “uplisted” to the Nasdaq sooner rather than later…
“Which would be an absolutely critical milestone for this company.”
So yes, here Abeyta is again teasing the cryptocurrency broker Voyager Digital (VOYG in Toronto, VYGVF OTC in the US), which launched its app in December last year and therefore had extraordinary timing, releasing their product right when Bitcoin and Ethereum and so many other cryptos were doubling in price every few weeks. Since Abeyta’s pitch they have upgraded their listing from the tiny CSE in Canada to the grown-up Toronto exchange, and have made it onto the OTCQX platform in the US, though
Coinbase (COIN) is certainly the best known crypto exchange and brokerage company for US investors, though there are dozens of other fairly large ones that are pretty widely used, and one way to think of the situation is that Coinbase is kind of the big, traditional broker with lots of stodgier rules and higher fees, and, yes, Voyager is Robinhood, with no commissions or fees for trading and with everything simpler and app-based, so you run it all from your phone.
And there are many ways to earn “interest” on your cryptocurrency holdings, including from Coinbase for some tokens, but Voyager promotes that more than the other brokers or exchanges I’ve used — so in my little Voyager account, for example, there is an entry that they pay 5.75% interest on Bitcoin holdings, 5% for Cardano and 12% for Polkadot. Those numbers move around a lot, and probably nobody is buying Bitcoin because they’re excited about a 5% annual “interest” payment (after all, the price of Bitcoin often moves up and down by more than 5% in a day), but it is good to see those little “reward” entries in the account every day or two, and it still feels like a nice selling point… and over time, if the crypto markets stabilize at all, it might compound and become meaningful for their customers.
Voyager has been recommended and teased by other newsletters in the past as well, and I first covered it when it was being teased by Jim Woods early this year — and while the numbers have changed pretty dramatically as they’ve grown up from almost nothing, and fluctuated pretty dramatically with the rise and fall of Bitcoin driving interest in and out of cryptos, the business of recruiting new users has been impressive and pretty steady.
This is an incredible business growth story right now — I don’t know how the story ends, of course, but this part of it would be headlined “crazy growth”, they have gone from about $200 million in assets under management on their cryptocurrency platform at the end of December to $3.3 billion at the end of April, which was roughly 1,500% growth in four months (and about 100% growth since February). In February they had 175,000 funded accounts and 605,000 verified users on the platform, growth of ~300% in just two months, and they kept that up, with 95,000 more accounts in March and another 395,000 users. During an explosive time in the crypto world (and in the markets more broadly), this was a wild story stock, creating a big business out of nothing in just a few months.
Fast forward, though, and you can see why the shares fell — as Bitcoin prices dipped late in the Spring and into the Summer, the June quarter stayed strong… but, it turns out, it was far, far stronger than the just-completed September quarter, which has been preannounced as a big disappointment… the June quarter hit $109 million in revenue, and their preliminary report, in the first week of October, was that the September quarter 40% below that — revenues will only hit about $65 million (they won’t report the full quarterly details until the morning of Friday, October 29).
That’s a big drop in one quarter, which always makes investors a little scared, and it wasn’t directly due to weak Bitcoin prices (when they provided that guidance in mid-July, Bitcoin was near the lows for the year — by the time September ended, it was up close to 50%).
The operating business is still growing, funded accounts grew by another 25% or so in the last quarter, to 860,000 (from 665,000 on June 30, 2021), and they have another 1.3 million verified users who don’t have funds in their accounts (yet, one hopes). They added about half as much in new deposits in the quarter as they did last quarter… but they did still grow, they added $827 million in net new deposits. Assets Under Management were above $5 billion a few months ago, tripling from the beginning of 2021, and they’re beginning to get approvals to do business outside the US as well, particularly in Europe.
But oh, man, has the stock been disappointing. Here’s what Voyager has done since Abeyta first teased it in May — with that same “most obvious 10X opportunity” and “Robinhood of Crypto” language (that’s the Bitcoin price in purple, Voyager in orange:
And Abeyta has owned up to that… and apparently has now doubled down on the stock here. I was impressed that he spoke up on Twitter when the terrible September numbers came out, and I shared this in a Friday File a few weeks ago:
This week I noticed something that we rarely see, a newsletter pundit publicly calling himself out for “getting it wrong” — everyone is wrong sometimes, and picks a bad stock sometimes, especially if you judge by just a short period of time of a few quarters or years, but this was the tweet that Enrique Abeyta posted about his pitch of Voyager (VYGVF), a stock he teased as the “Robinhood of Crypto” back in the Spring (the stock is down about 50% now from when he touted it, he says in further tweets that he still likes the stock and remains “constructive in the intermediate term”, though I don’t know what he may be saying to his subscribers):
Well folks – we got this FUCKING WRONG. $VYGVF The estimates below were CAD and the company this morning reported $65mm USD for the Q versus our low-end of $118mm. Obviously our modeling was wrong. Read below for more 👇👇👇https://t.co/gXYh78Ml7K https://t.co/R8nvGqCbje
— Enrique Abeyta (@enriqueabeyta) October 6, 2021
(For disclosure’s sake, I do have a Voyager account, and I think it’s a good product, but I do not own the shares.)
The next quarter shouldn’t be a surprise, at least on the top-line numbers, since they preannounced that disappointment a few weeks ago — which means there could be room for an upside surprise if they say more optimistic things about a NY listing, or about their asset growth so far this quarter, or whatever else they might mention that gets investors excited again on Friday. Doesn’t mean they will surprise, or that any surprise would be a good one, but expectations are at least much lower now, and that’s a decent reason to start looking at Voyager again.
If they can keep up this current level of business, that would be annualized revenue of at least $240 million. It could fall back down if this business turns out to be a flash in the pan, or if cryptocurrency prices collapse and interest dries up, but it could also grow to several times that level in a matter of months if cryptos keep soaring and Voyager can handle the influx of new users (there’s no obvious “ceiling” on cryptocurrency interest — Coinbase has more than 50X Voyager’s assets at this point). Voyager’s market cap is down to about $1.3 billion now, so the stock is valued at about 4X the revenue that analysts expect them to have next year (about C$430 million), which is a pretty interesting multiple. Even though the two businesses are quite different and Coinbase has that fat high-margin fee income that Voyager can’t enjoy with its no-commission platform, Voyager’s valuation really catches the eye now, compared to ~10X 2022 revenue estimates for the much larger Coinbase (which has a market cap now of about $65 billion).
I’ve been using Voyager as a customer this year, and the platform strikes me as inherently a little different and maybe riskier, because it seems like you’re opening an account which Voyager manages for you as you trade in and out of various cryptos instead of having your own “wallet,” (I don’t want to imply that this is super-risky, it’s a brokerage — so this is kind of akin to trading stocks in a regular brokerage account instead of getting the certificates in your name at the transfer agent directly)… but that also makes it easier and makes it possible for them to promise those compelling-sounding high yields. There are risks in using Coinbase and the many other exchange and wallet services as well, every provider offers different risks and benefits, and there are few guarantees in crypto world.
For investors, it’s all about growth and building a platform with a large enough user base to become stable and profitable someday… and with cryptocurrencies, which most people aren’t involved with at all, we’re still really in a “land grab” phase where the brokers and platforms and exchanges are trying to build up that user base fast by offering new traders an easy and cheap onramp to the crypto world.
So the question really is, can they keep it up? So far, they can, but right now it’s not the rocketship it appeared to be in March and April. Analysts in Canada expect them to be profitable next year, and quite dramatically so — Voyager shares are trading at only about 11X forecasted 2022 earnings (vs. about 35-40X earnings for Coinbase), but, of course, predicting this company a quarter at a time has been an exercise in futility, so we shouldn’t have a huge amount of confidence that those analysts will be right about next year.
I like Voyager a lot more at $10 than I did in the $20s, but the biggest risk here is probably competition — Voyager is building its customer base, but so is everyone else, and investors probably got a little overexcited with the first explosion of growth in January… but the stock chart tells us that investors are a lot more confident in the much larger Coinbase, which has essentially kept pace with Bitcoin prices, than they are in volatile Voyager, with its weak summer quarter. Here’s that chart to show you the difference… Voyager has been public for longer than Coinbase, so here’s Voyager compared to Bitcoin, going back to the beginning of this year:
And here’s those two plus Coinbase, going back to the COIN IPO in April — you can see COIN tracking with Bitcoin, but Voyager being left in the dust over the past couple months:
That dynamic has to change if Voyager is going to build something big here… and it might, analysts are optimistic and the underlying business at Voyager Digital is still growing… but the risk, of course, is that the dynamic hasn’t changed yet. I decided to wade in here, because I think there’s a good chance it will turn now that we’ve bottomed out at a much more reasonable valuation, but it’s a very competitive business and they remain a small fry, so they could also just fail.
If you feel like trying either of these “training wheels” onramps to the crypto world, I can tell you that I’ve been quite happy with Coinbase for a long time, and Voyager has some potential and has a wider variety of cryptocurrencies available, as well as that enticing promise of a potential 5-8% yield.
If you want to join me in these platforms either to start trading or to begin to research them as an investor, there are affiliate referral programs that would get us both a reward — so if you use my link to join Coinbase and buy or sell $100 worth of cryptocurrencies, we each get $10 worth of Bitcoin, and if you use my link to join Voyager with code AF72CA the terms are a bit better, I think we each get $25 of Bitcoin for placing a $100 trade (so you can see that’s one way Voyager is spending pretty heavily to recruit lots of new customers quickly). I’ve used Coinbase for seven or eight years, so I’m more comfortable and confident in that platform, but so far Voyager has been fun to explore a little bit, and it’s certainly an easier to use platform, with faster trades and usually a somewhat broader variety of cryptocurrencies available (though Coinbase has gotten more aggressive in adding new tokens to their trading platform, too).
To be clear, I consider these cryptocurrency positions to be interesting speculations, and perhaps hedges against monetary insanity if things reach some absurd level of hyperinflation (which is not terribly likely), and in some cases to be interesting “venture capital” style speculations on emerging platforms and technology standards… but I also am quite aware that it is possible my positions in these speculative cryptocurrencies will lose 90% of their value in a bad month. This is not “widows and orphans” stuff, so don’t be so enticed by those stories of 8.5% yields or 500% gains that you begin to think of these as in any way safe.
Here’s the backstory for you in chart form, just to provide a little perspective — this is Bitcoin and Ethereum in the several years leading up to the 2018 peak…
Here’s the two years after that 2018 peak, including a “dip” of about 75% for Bitcoin and 90% for Ethereum:
And here’s the part that has everyone excited anew, the big move up from the lows of early 2020, the collapse this year, then the strong recovery:
Is the next move another surge to new highs on the back of growing institutional interest and emerging trust in cryptocurrencies? Or another collapse if that trust is quickly broken for some as-yet-unforeseen reason, or money otherwise dries up for any reason?
I have no idea, but if you’re new to this world I just wanted to get that “down 90%” chart into your brain before you get too excited about the “up 1,000%” part, we need to keep both those potential outcomes in mind. If cryptocurrencies collapse in value, the brokers and asset managers will fall in value, too — they might not go out of business, but they will obviously be hurt.
It’s not so different from stock brokers, to get back to that comparison, so keep in mind that Charles Schwab’s share price collapsed 75% following the dot com collapse, as their revenue fell by about 50% from the peak of dot-com trading mania (and Schwab also fell by about 50% during the 2008 crash, for what it’s worth). And that valuation even at the peak for Schwab in 2000 (it was around 10X sales then) didn’t come close to where Coinbase is trading, and Voyager, being almost microscopically small, is priced much more attractively but almost guaranteed to be wildly more volatile and react dramatically to cryptocurrency prices moves.
Still an interesting idea, still a stock I haven’t been willing to speculate on personally… though that changes today. I confess to being more interested now as it has collapsed and stabilized a bit, at a much lower valuation, and as I reviewed it again to write this updated article, I was convinced enough to add a small position to the Real Money Portfolio as we head into the earnings call on Friday.
Any thoughts on Voyager or other crypto-related investments in the stock market? Let us know with a comment below.
P.S. Abeyta’s newsletter is still fairly new, so we don’t have much reader feedback about it yet — if you’ve ever subscribed to Empire Elite Growth, please click here to share your experience with your fellow investors. Thanks!
Disclosure: Of the stocks mentioned above, I own shares of Galaxy Digital and Voyager Digital. I also hold accounts at both Coinbase and Voyager Digital, and own stakes in all of the cryptocurrencies mentioned, as well as in Voyager’s own VGX token. I will not trade in any covered stock for at least three days after publication, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.
Mark Cuban just signed a 5 year deal with VYGVF.
Long.
Based on your previous write up I have purchased and sold VYVGF and BTBT making some great money on its ups and downs
They both tend to overreact to BTC going up more and down more. So if you believe in BTC and think you know it’s direction you can do better with these. Mara, Riot and several others also ride the same waves.
That’s generally been true for the crypto-associated names, but not so with Voyager in the past few months… the stock’s price has disconnected from Bitcoin, which is both an opportunity and a risk.
Also everyone should take a serious look at WonderFi and who is backing them. Still so under the radar as very early days – an exceptional time to invest IMO.
NEO: WNDR
OTCM: WONDF
Are you in this? Looks interesting
Unfortunately for me I was intrigued with Voyager at $20 & it’s become my worst investment. It hasn’t done much for my confidence in Abeyta’s picks even if its only 1 pick, no-brainer should mean no-brainer. I should have bailed out when I tried opening an account with Voyager & was waitlisted for a long time, Coinbase was instant signup. Good thing is Travis mentioned Galaxy Digital when Voyager was pitched & I’ve done much better with that stock. I do think Voyager will recover longer term or merge with another broker so I’m holding for now.
It’s true, these over-the-top marketing claims of “no brainers” and “can’t lose” picks and promoted 10X returns don’t do the pundits any favors — I guess they need to make big promises to try to get attention, which has certainly been the story for newsletter pitchmen for as long as I’ve been studying this business (15 years or so now), but they’re almost guaranteed to disappoint most of the time.
I’ve been waitlisted for more than a month now. Very annoying, I must say.
I do not believe the US Gov’t will abdicate its currency power.
The US Constitution states Article I Section 8 “Congress shall have the power to coin-mint money and determine the value thereof”. US Gov’t will soon implement the US Digital dollar and render all other cryptocurrencies moot and demised (in the crypt). NG To the average man, it was seen as salvation…
Yet, overnight, FDR’s plan did something radically different…
It allowed the Treasury to pay for all his pet programs — from Social Security to the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Civilian Conservation Corps — by making a massive change to the dollar.
Image
At the time, our currency was backed by gold. And coins, like these, were popular.
Image
But with this single act, the government forced Americans to turn in their gold savings.
In fact, the Federal Reserve Bank in New York snatched more than $30 million – worth almost $600 million in today’s dollars – on just one fateful day.
Each one-ounce coin was swapped for $20.67 in paper money. Failure to comply would result in a massive $10,000 fine – or jail time.
And once the government had its hand on the gold?
It changed the price to $35 an ounce… effectively stealing 69% of Americans’ savings.
Do you see a pattern here?
I don’t think the government will start accepting bitcoin for tax payments, but I don’t expect a China-type crackdown on cryptos in this country, either (and China’s crackdown on crypto mining and trading in recent months has, at least so far, been surprising ineffective). And there’s no reason for bitcoin “seizure” a’la FDR’s gold seixure — FDR had to seize gold to revalue the currency and break the gold standard, thereby allowing more government spending and inflation, but we haven’t had any restriction on currency “printing” since Nixon so there is no artificial limit on government spending or inflation for modern leaders to worry about. At least, as long as voters continue to enjoy insisting on lower taxes and higher government spending.
US Gov’t will dictate what s a currency. It will include the new US Digital $. The tangible (so far) backing the US $ is an undeclared bankrupt US Gov’t. There is no tangible nor true intangible backing any of the bitcoin, etc cryptocurrencies. What tangible do you see that’s backing Bitcoin? The so-called mining for it is pseudo. The talk of gov’t following bank accounts and transfers of $600 or more is static -talk. Congress will pass legislation eliminating cash and a new US Gov’t digital dollar. It will enable tracing and tracking transactions fully. Banks will not be required to report directly to IRS ( as they do 12-31 annually of you fair market value of your retirement plan where you are required to take RMDs) every transaction. But when they audit a taxpayer and ascertain in its belief, there is a fraud, then they will request it from a bank or institution which admins the account(s). There is an underground cash economy in the US that this going cashless will put tax dollars (digital) into the Gov’t revenue accounts. Time will make the determination as to what occurs. MO which with $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
The problem with your thesis is that the US Treasury prints/mints nothing. Our currency is under the control of the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a private bank (the largest in the world) that was established in 1913. Prior to that, most of the individual states had their own currency. Another common mistake people make is thinking that the “US Government” is constantly at risk of defaulting on “its” debt. The Corporation of the United States of America, which is the formal name of our country as recognized by the World Court and IMF, has zero debt. Yes, zero. The 5 men that founded the Fed, were BRILLANT! Twice before the creation of the Fed, the US government had to go to the country’s wealthiest to get a bailout … those guys got tired of it, so they formed the Fed to gain control of the irresponsible government spending.
The point is, all of the nation’s debt obligations are in reality backed by the full faith and credit of a private bank. The US government offers no security for this debt. Think about that … at any time, we could have a Lehman situation with the Fed, and there isn’t a thing anyone could do about it. If the Fed defaults, for example, China would immediately see a 7% collapse in its GDP. To get out of our financial hole, there are only two nuclear-type options, hyperinflation (I’m talking years at 25%+) or default. Hyperinflation allows you to pay the debt with “cheaper” dollars. Default is instant.
Enter Crypto … It is basically a commodity like gold. Remember, until 1973, when Nixon made the change, our “currency” was backed by gold, a hard asset. Now, it is backed by bluster and hot air. Don’t think for a minute, the Fed and the government haven’t “allowed” the crypto experiment to move forward. No one was caught by surprise … it’s been in the works for a long time to figure out if it could be a viable exit strategy for the US dollar to not be the world’s reserve currency and to provide an avenue for the possibility of a Fed default. Look no further than the timing of the exponential precariousness of the financial markets vs. the rise of crypto. It may or may not be Bitcoin or Ether, but I’m convinced that money, as we know it today, will be completely transformed within the next 10 years.
China’s crackdown has a lot to do with it not being ready for the new market. It knows very well what happens to the country if the Dollars go away. China’s economy will be done.
You’re perfunctory in substance. The US Constitution states; ” Congress shall have the power to coin or mint money, and to determine the value thereof. When Congress takes the cash away ( it will do so) then You will Still have a US Dollar. But, It will only exist in digital regard. There will be no printing by any entity. I am old enough to remember (and receive them) when one purchased a stock, they received a Printed Certificate. When, if you sold said stock you had to redeem the certificate. Now your bank account and your portfolio account are virtually a DIGITAL ACCOUNT. An abstract generality by you here -“The point is, all of the nation’s debt obligations are in reality backed by the full faith and credit of a private bank. The US government offers no security for this debt. Think about that … That is a hoot. Who just recently Voted to temporarily increase and extend the US Gov’t Debt? Was it not Congress. The US Dollar is fully (pretended) backed by an undeclared bankrupt United States of America. Where does every tax item of tax legislation suppose to originate from? The House Joint Ways and Means committee? Where are the spending bills supposed to originate from? Congress? Bitcoin has no tangible value backing it and it is not like Gold and I will not pretend to explain that one to you. Bitcoin has no intangible value (like a stock certificate did unless the Co went bankrupt) The coming Reset for America economically (fiscally) will be primarily due to DEBT. An entity can not borrow and spend its way out of debt. The US Gov’t can’t tax its way out of debt. Believe as you choose and to each his own (thought).
If no one else likes this comment, I sure as hell will! Where’s my pen and paper?!
He is not the only one who is bullish on Voyager. There are others newsletters still pitching it (acknowledging the recent “price weakness”). So, maybe it will recover. I think that it is a common rule in Financial Publishing that the editors can’t either own the recommendations at all or at least before some time after they first recommend it. (I believe that Teeka Twari owns bitcoin and Jeff Brown owns Nvidia, the key is when dd they buy them for their own account).
It’s definitely not a standardized rule, Stansberry used to be the strictest on those criteria, but certainly everyone has rules.
Travis: It’s not just the stock prices of on line stock brokers like Ch Schwab that decline with market busts as in 2000 and 2008, so do the shares of even stodgy traditional Asset Managers. It’s just a reflection of the variation in value of AUM. This is reflected in the Beta values of the commons.
I thought that the prices of exchange sector stocks wouldn’t correlate with market volatility as trading volumes increase with market turmoil.
How does Voyager Digital make money? Does it dilute the number of shares outstanding by secondary offerings? Is it Cash Flow positive?
Don’t think the corporate strategy of “buying” customers is a sustainable sales and marketing program long term; you have looked at the numbers. I guess Voyager Dig has to differentiate itself by doing this. Could be a real test of the viability of the business plan once this shuts down.
The fact that Voyager does not correlate with BTC is interesting but somewhat of a mystery and raises questions about insider selling or some other major shareholder transactions.
I think the lack of correlation recently is mostly a fluke of the wild past year. Whether it’s going to be worthwhile to “buy” customers right now or not is an open question, but they are ramping up their promotional budget (including the deal with the Dallas Mavericks today) to try to do so, and I expect they would quickly lose ground to competitors if they didn’t — there’s so much money in this sector that the competition will probably be crazy for quite some time.
“I’ll take a flier”: pragmatic, polite, and poetic!
I’m beginning to see a real pattern showing up here. It seems that when a security trading in Canada (and doing well) decides to list in the US, it tanks. This one is near perfect. It began trading in the US April 1/21 which was the peak (almost to the day) of the listing on the TSX. May explain the shellacking I took on Acuity ads.
That’s the opposite of what has typically happened historically, usually stocks that are getting a US listing move up on the news and sometimes pop further after the listing actually happens, due to the much larger pool of investors who can participate in the US. Not always, for sure, but that’s what has typically happened.
Both Acuity and Voyager were also very small companies that got a massive new surge of attention — Voyager from bitcoin and their new product launch, Acuity from the Motley Fool attention.
I agree. That is why I was the enthusiastic bull in both cases. The US is roughly 10x larger and I believe even more liquid. Tough to figure out.
Very good summary.
I think this stock is a good long-term speculation. That means: put money into it that you can easily afford to lose, then forget about it for several years. Don’t count it as part of your net worth. If it goes to zero, no problem, you wrote the money off anyway. If it goes up 5x, sell enough to recover whatever you put in – and leave the rest until you retire.
Just saw an update on Voyager. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/28/alameda-research-pumps-75m-funding-into-voyager-digital/
FYI I have a small position and have been in and out of it several times. Currently holding long term. I wish there were options available so I could sell way out of the money covered calls with short expirations.
Well, Travis, that Voyager buy was well-timed. I bought Galaxy and Voyager several months ago and have been holding them while they’ve both been slaughtered. Back in the green on Galaxy and may get there tomorrow on Voyager if there’s positive reaction to the pre-market earnings call.
been there, done that , bought the tee shirt and lost $2,000. Platform flaky. Nervous about security. I’m too old and been a programmer for too long for that kind of thrills.
I am happy I followed my friends recommendation and signed up as an irregular. I wish I had listened to her over a year ago and could have saved several hundred dollars invested in news letters in more stock. It is very refreshing to get away from those greedy pigs out there. Now I am slowly weedy out their numerous emails as my subscriptions come to an end.
Eric Wade new Crypto pitch….”Buy these 6 coins now!” Anyone know whaich and is he really as good as Stansberry says he is?
I’ve been Voyager since early 2020 but look in LRC zkRollup possible NFT Deal with GME next Sol moon shot hopefully
Do we think this stock is ever going to recover considering their recent missteps? is this a buying opportunity now