THE BILLIONAIRE OF THE PEOPLE:
This is Chamath Palihapitiya. He likes to frame himself as the billionaire of the people. He’s
apparently on the side of retail investors, he wants to spread awareness about climate change
and pollution, and he wants to change the world for the better. But, Chamath is nothing more than
a master manipulator and public relations expert. Everything he says and does is cynically crafted
to draw your attention and make you feel a certain way. This is exactly how he was able go from being
an unknown rich douchebag to briefly becoming even more popular than former retail favorite
Cathie Wood. But, don’t be fooled. While Cathie Wood is getting destroyed by the market right now,
she truly believed and still believes every word she said. Chamath on the other hand was
just playing the publicity game and he used his charm and apparent honesty to
attract millions of retail investors towards him. If he had simply constructed a fanbase,
it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but Chamath would consistently go onto financial news outlets
like CNBC and Bloomberg and spew investment advice that he himself did not believe in.
This would result in millions of investors to consistently follow his advice and get burned
while Chamath would always pull out at the right time, growing his billion dollar empire. Now,
this is nothing new on Wall Street. Hedge funds and investment banks are notorious for screwing
over the average investor. But they don’t even try to hide it. That’s just the game they play. They
make their money on the FOMO, fear, and blunders of retail investors. Chamath on the other hand
likes the masquerade as the good guy. He’s the one that tips a minimum of a 100% to support
hardworking waiters. He’s the one that invests in businesses and ideas that help build the future
for everyone. He’s the one who exposes the phony insiders. But, in reality the only phony here is
himself. So, here’s the ugly truth behind the billionaire of the people: Chamath Palihaptiya.
MANIPULATING INVESTORS: One of the biggest traits
that people value in someone that they look up to or take advice from is authenticity. But,
Chamath has virtually no authenticity because the things he says have little to do with what
he personally believes in. Instead, he simply tells you exactly what you wanna hear. He
cleverly identifies trending investment topics and cynically positions himself squarely on the side
of the retail investor. Likely one of the best examples of this positioning is with Tesla stock.
By now, I’m sure you’re all familiar with Tesla’s insane run up and eventual crash over the past few
years. Much of this was caused by retail investors squeezing out short sellers who had pummeled the
stock for years. So, it was only natural that a sort of comradery and brotherhood was formed
amongst these investors. They had shown up hedge funds and even Bill Gates. And now,
they were gonna hodl till they can’t hodl no more because one, screw the shorts, and two,
don’t bet against Elon. Meanwhile, Chamath was looking for a way to get these people behind him,
and it turns it, this wasn’t that hard. Virtually everyone on the news other than Cathie Wood was
bagging on Tesla, so all Chamath had to do was position himself as the billionaire who supported
Tesla all out and that’s exactly what he did. And that was just one clip. Chamath would consistently
tell the public that they were essentially a fool if they even thought about selling Tesla. Chamath
would even go as far as defending Tesla when it came to controversial business decisions. Hearing
all this, you would think that Chamath was Tesla’s number one supporter, but what if I told you that
Chamath would actually end up selling his entire Tesla stake. In fact, Chamath would end up selling
his entire position within 8 months of that clip, at which point he revealed that he had actually
been selling Tesla for nearly a year. This means that he was literally selling Tesla as he
was making that statement telling everyone to not sell Tesla. Looking back, Chamath played his cards
perfectly as this is where he sold all of his shares well before the 75% crash. But, this also
means that this is where many of his followers bought all of their Tesla shares and most of them
would end up getting destroyed by this crash. When confronted about his flipflopping, Chamath would
simply respond that he has the right to change his mind. But, here’s what he forget to mention.
When he appears on these financial outlets as the billionaire investor with authority, he also has
the responsibility of leading investors in the right direction. This doesn’t mean that he had
to hold onto his Tesla stake. He could’ve pulled a Cathie Wood and hodled with the retailers,
but he didn’t have to. As we discussed, he sold at the perfect time, and unless you’re
holding onto the S&P 500, you should be wiling to switch your position. As a billionaire investor,
he knows this. So, the issue wasn’t that he sold his stake. The issue was that he presented Tesla
as the end all be all. And he classified those who sold Tesla as idiots when that may have been
the right choice for many. And Tesla is just one example of his hyperbolic investment advice. He’s
made similar statements about Bitcoin, about Virgin Galactic, and about a bunch of other
retail favorites as well. Heck, he even bought calls on Gamestop during the short squeeze. But,
unlike Elon who truly believed in the effort, for Chamath, all of these were just publicity stunts.
ENGINEERED TURDS: Making yourself look
better by siding with retailers is one thing, but launching crappy investments and getting people to
invest is something completely different. As for Chamath, well he’s done both. Chamath is regarded
as the king of SPACs, but this isn’t anything to be proud of. Everytime you see the word SPAC, you
can replace it with the word scam, and it wouldn’t change the meaning all that much. If you’re not
familiar with SPACs, it stands for Special Purpose Acquisiton Company, and it’s really just a scheme
to bypass regulation while making deal sponsors like Chamath even richer. Here’s how it works.
Let’s say you have an up and coming company that wants to go public. If you wanted to do it the
right way, you would have to go through a bunch of SEC scrutiny and pay massive fees to simply
operate as a public company. You’ll have to put out quarterly reports, host shareholder meetings,
and probably deal with more audits. While this is truly quite annoying for businesses,
these regulations are what keeps retail investors atleast somewhat safe. But, what if there was a
way to work around this red tape? Well there is. Enter SPACs. SPACs are basically shell companies
that will go public in place of the original company. People can invest into the SPAC and the
SPAC will turn around and invest into the original company. And given that the SPAC is just a shell,
it’s far easier and cheaper to maintain the SPAC as a public company. Chamath likes to frame SPACs
as some sort of service to retail investors. He’s apparently leveling the playing field by giving
everyday people access to private investments. But really, SPACs are just a way to give the public
access to highly volatile private investments that aren’t quite ready for the public. As such, these
companies usually get obliterated by the market once the hype dies down, and that’s exactly what’s
happened to basically all of Chamath’s SPACs. Virigin Galactic down 94%. Opendoor down 97%.
Clover down 95%. SoFi down 85%. Desktop Metal down 96%. Proterra down 88%. Latch down 97%. Sunlight
Financial down 94%. Berkshire Grey down 96%. Basically every single one of Chamath’s SPACs are
down 90%. But, none of this matters for Chamath because he’s already made his money. Did you
think Chamath setup up these SPACs for free? Of course not. He gets 20% of every SPAC he creates
for himself. And you can bet that he offloads these turds as soon as possible. For example,
Chamath sold his Virgin Galactic stake for over three times the IPO price which netted
him $200 million. So, not only is Chamath throwing out crappy investment advice,
he’s literally engineering crappy investments that lead to retail investors losing billions
of dollars. And he does all of this while pretending to be the billionaire of the people.
RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR: Through all of this,
you’ve probably been wondering: why go through all of this effort to craft a public image. Why not
just be a SPAC king behind closed doors and avoid the public’s eye altogether. Well, the answer is
that Chamath has political ambitions of becoming the governor of California. And all of his public
appearances and Gamestop YOLOs are his strategy to get into the good graces of everyday people. But,
here’s the thing. If you can’t even trust this guy to hold onto his stock positions, how can you
trust him to execute on his campaign promises. The answer is that you can’t, and if you don’t
yet believe me that Chamath is just a cynical turd, just listen to how he describes the Uyghur
genocide in China. It’s one thing to say that most people are ignorant of the genocide which
is probably true. But it’s something completely different to say that people don’t care and that
this crime against humanity is under his line. Now, this is actually the only time in this video
that I’ll actually support Chamath. I don’t think Chamath actually means what he says here. I think
he’s trying to use the Donald Trump and Andrew Tate strategy of making ludicrous statements just
to draw people’s attention. For example, Trump had his infamous line about Mexicans and Tate has
dozens of clips about women. So, Chamath may have just been trying to play into the media cycle and
get more attention for himself. But, this really isn’t all that much better. Either Chamath truly
doesn’t care about mass genocide or he does care and he’s cynical enough to use mass genocide as a
publicity stunt. Both are despicable behavior, just different levels of it. Fortunately,
people didn’t fall for his little stunt and he would end up getting slammed by his audience and
the media alike. At the end of the day though, this wasn’t the first time that Chamath had used
this strategy. It was just the first time that he blasted for it. Back when he was promoting Tesla,
he was literally selling the stock. But, he was talking up the stock just to gain publicity for
his clean energy initiatives as governor. Similarly, when he bought into Gamestop, he
was simultaneously launching SPACs that would cost retailers the same losses that hedge funds were
causing. But he had the audacity to act like the billionaire that was supporting the strike against
Wall Street. The reality is that for Chamath, everything that he says and does on TV is just
to gain publicity and momentum for his potential policital career. You shouldn’t take a single word
he says as his true beliefs or genuine advice because in the end, he’s just a cynical turd.
IT’S JUST BUSINESS: I know this video has been
quite critical of Chamath, and I would argue that that’s well deserved. But, we should also
note that Chamath is just playing the political game. The reality is that cynicism, back stabbing,
and public support are prerequesitites to have any chance of winning the political game. So,
it’s not really surprising that Chamath has chosen to play his cards that way that he has. The point
of this video, however, is to show that we as the somewhat educated public should also be aware of
what game these people are playing and not become overly enthralled in anything that they say. Just
because Chamath likes an investment doesn’t mean that you should buy and just because he talks down
on greedy Wall Street doesn’t mean that he won't pull the same tricks himself. It’s not personal,
it’s just business and politics. And that's the truth about Chamath Palihapitiya. Were you ever
a fan of Chamath? Comment that down below. Also, drop a like if you would like to see more honest
takes. And of course, consider checking out our discord community to suggest
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