David Z. Morris

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David Z. Morris

David Z. Morris

@davidzmorris

Tech + Finance Understander @ZKZeroKnowledge Book: "Stealing the Future: SBF and Elite Fraud" 'Hardcore' - NYMag X-Fortune, CoinDesk PhD @uiowa

Bushwick, Brooklyn Katılım Nisan 2009
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David Z. Morris
David Z. Morris@davidzmorris·
It would appear Nvidia is literally doing an Enron. Specifically, it has reinvented the Chewco Maneuver: Create fake "third parties" to absorb unwanted liabilities, fund with your own capital to prime the pump, then get rubes (retirement funds) to eat the risk.
Bull Theory@BullTheoryio

🚨Michael Burry just said Elon Musk and Nvidia's deal is built on fake numbers. Burry published a detailed breakdown calling the entire structure "Fugazi", his word for fake. He is alleging that billions of dollars in Nvidia chips are being hidden off balance sheets, and that American retirees are unknowingly funding the whole thing. Nvidia, the world's largest AI chip company sold $5.4 billion worth of its most advanced GPUs, the GB200, to a company called Valor. Valor is not a real operating business. It is a special purpose vehicle, a shell company created specifically to hold these chips and nothing else. Nvidia also invested $1.9 billion of its own money directly into Valor on top of the sale. Those 100,000+ chips are now physically inside xAI's data center. xAI is Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, the one that builds Grok. xAI is using every single one of those chips right now to run its AI models. But here is what Burry is flagging. Neither Nvidia nor xAI owns those chips on paper. Valor, the shell company holds legal title. That means $5.4 billion in GPU assets do not show up on Nvidia's balance sheet as inventory. They do not show up on xAI's balance sheet as assets. They are legally invisible to both companies. Nvidia gets to book the $5.4 billion as a completed sale and record it as revenue. xAI gets full use of the chips without owning them. And the risk disappears into a shell company in the middle. Now here is where American retirees enter the picture. Valor needed $3.5 billion in debt to fund this structure. Apollo provided it. Apollo is one of the largest asset managers on earth with $1.03 trillion under management and $834 billion specifically in private credit. Apollo raised the $3.5 billion, packaged it into debt securities, and sold those securities to Athene. Athene is Apollo's own insurance company. It sells fixed and indexed annuities, retirement savings products, to ordinary Americans. When a retiree buys an Athene annuity, they believe their money is sitting in safe, stable investments. That money is now inside a structure funding Elon Musk's AI data center. The numbers inside Athene are most alarming. Athene holds $74.2 billion in reserves. It has moved $217 billion in assets into a captive insurer based in Bermuda, meaning those assets sit outside normal US insurance regulation and oversight. Of the entire portfolio, 34.7%, equal to $103 billion, is classified as Level 3 assets. Level 3 is an accounting classification that means there is no observable market price for these assets. No outside party can independently verify what they are actually worth. The leverage sitting on top of those unpriced assets is 16 times. Burry's says: Every step of this structure is technically legal and publicly disclosed. But the entire thing was deliberately engineered across 8 to 12 steps to move credit risk off balance sheets and away from any market pricing. - Nvidia books the revenue. - Apollo collects the fees. - xAI gets the computing power. - And retirees sitting at the bottom of a 16x leveraged Bermuda insurance structure, holding $103 billion in assets with no market price carry the risk without knowing it exists.

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Kenneth P. Vogel
Kenneth P. Vogel@kenvogel·
The rapper Boosie BadAzz wanted a Trump pardon, so he paid $600k to the convicted fraudster lobbyists Jacob Wohl & Jack Burkman. “They were talking like they had Trump on speed dial,” @BOOSIEOFFICIAL told @NOTUSreports. Now, he’s seeking a partial refund notus.org/trump-white-ho…
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David Z. Morris
David Z. Morris@davidzmorris·
The real rub is that, bar Roose at the Times, the more impactful outlets are also more likely to be critical. Readers want honesty, which is to a <degree *why* Wired et al get eyeballs. Not understanding this is why VCs have failed every time they try to do owned media.
Jack Appleby@jappleby

Tech founders are so funny. If you want marketing, pay for marketing. But you wanted free press, then got surprised that giving an exclusive didn’t mean a journalist would GUSH about your product.

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Bag Holder
Bag Holder@BagholderQuotes·
“I recently leased a CyberTruck for $1300/mo so I could rent it on Turo and soon use the RoboTaxi feature to rent it out. But since then it turns out I have to declare bankruptcy and also my Turo account got banned for an interaction with a customer that I won't go into here.”
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Matthew R. Kratter #BIP-110
It's Monday, so time to check in on the weekly humiliation of $MSTR holders. They got diluted again over the weekend. Bitcoin yield now negative for the quarter (-1.6%) and falling since June 1. Strategy now holds a much bigger melting ice cube of USD. Amazing work, Saylor!
Matthew R. Kratter #BIP-110 tweet media
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dolo
dolo@doloyeung·
My father never accepted Yoshi's addition to the Mario series only ever referring to him as "The Serpent". "The Serpent is at best a tool not a character", he'd say. One Christmas I asked for Yoshi's Story and instead received a bible. "The Serpent's story is in there", he said
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Ashley Mayer
Ashley Mayer@ashleymayer·
I’m guessing few people who joined the backlash chorus against WIRED’s IX Neo piece actually read the full article, or watched the company’s video that sparked some of its inquiries. First, some acknowledgements: 1) This technology is incredible (especially when autonomous versus remotely human-controlled). 2) It’s always stressful to put yourself, your company and your product out there for judgement. An outsider is never going to understand all the context. 3) Media often impose a narrative - sometimes it’s in service of what’s most interesting/relevant to their audience, and sometimes it’s less noble. It’s appropriate to call stuff out that feels unfair, and social media has definitely shifted that power dynamic. That's a good thing! In this case, I personally thought the article was pretty balanced, and raised appropriate questions about privacy (re: the option to have a human take over remotely) coupled with the sexual nature of parts of the product video. For the former, this strikes me as a highly relevant frontier topic and the company had good responses! You should actually want media to ask these tough questions so you have a chance to address - always assume your audience/customer is smart. For the latter, you’ll have to judge for yourself...maybe I have a dirty mind, but looking at the YouTube comments, I am not alone 😇 Regardless, the Neo team did a good job capitalizing on the piece, and likely got far more attention turning this into an anti-media moment than they would have otherwise, especially since the article is behind a paywall anyway. TBD whether that helps or hurts them in the long run.
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David Z. Morris
David Z. Morris@davidzmorris·
If you're an ebook reader, one of the most fun and entertaining sci-fi novels ever written is on sale for three bucks! (Vinge also wrote the short story True Names, featured in my upcoming cypherpunk documentary!) A Fire Upon the Deep: amazon.com/dp/B000FBJAGO
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Arthur
Arthur@arthur0x·
At this point, I’m struggling to see any compelling logical rationale for owning $MSTR . It essentially functions as an infinite piggy bank whose sole purpose is to service obligations higher up in the capital stack.
Michael Saylor@saylor

Strategy has increased its USD Reserve by $450 million. As of 7/12/2026, we hodl ₿843,775 in our BTC Reserves and $3.0 billion in our USD Reserves. $MSTR $STRC strategy.com/press/strategy…

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David Z. Morris
David Z. Morris@davidzmorris·
"Someone has nonmonetary stakes big enough that they will be willing to lose money manipulating the market in this asset" is now a totally rational investment thesis
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David Z. Morris
David Z. Morris@davidzmorris·
$SPCX down 5% on the open, brutal, shocking, it's fucking Joever
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