This is Nick, this is Jack, and this is Snax Daily, it is Thursday, the new Friday, December 17. We have some warmly welcome news coming from Washington, D.C. It looks like the Senate's going to vote on another Econ. rescue bill nine months after the first. Nobody signed it. No one's even voted yet. But we're expecting more unemployment benefits and more stimulus checks for all Americans. They're going to be less generous this time. But this is pretty helpful because winter is coming and this next day is our best one yet.

Perfect segue, Nick. The best one yet for our first story, Mark Wahlberg, Eminem, D.J., Steve Aoki and Marshall Mathers.

What they have in common. All are investors in a sneaker marketplace called Stock X, which just hit a 2.8 billion dollar valuation.

For our second story, the new biggest cannabis company in Canada.

Also in the York, here's the thing. It's not about what artillery and Afri are growing. It's about what to wear in Africa are brewing. I'm picking up what you're putting down. Third and final story, Jack. A dirty little secret from Facebook. Get this snackers.

Turns out there's a whole team at Facebook dedicated to Zach. We have to talk about SEAL Team six.

But before we jump into that, honestly, a wonderful mix of stories today, Jack. You may have noticed that Bitcoin hit twenty thousand dollars for the first time ever. And in classic crypto fashion, there's no apparent reason for this job.

Sadly, though, Jack, idea of Dimmit that Ben, the Bitcoin is no longer with us.

I know. I'm so sad. We're not going to finish. Everybody with this is Nick and I own a Bitcoin. His name is Ben. You know what, Jack? It was his time. But snackers, this reminds us that the first ever commercial use of Bitcoin actually happened about ten years ago. Yeah. Happy ten year anniversary to Laszlo Haney's, who casually dropped into his local Papa John's and bought a pizza with Bitcoin ten years ago. That's right.

He bought to Papa John's pizzas with just a few Bitcoin, not just a few. Here's the kicker. He actually used ten thousand Bitcoin Bitcoins.

I'm not sure if this is and it's like fish or fish or deer or do you use ten thousand Bitcoin to pay for those two Papa John's pizzas?

That's because, get this, the cryptocurrency was trading at the time at just zero point zero four cents per Bitcoin, zero point zero since it was less than a penny each. Bitcoin was you need to round out the ten thousand Bitcoin just to afford the dough, the sauce and the mozzarella. Today, however, that ten thousand Bitcoin dinner would be worth two hundred million dollars. Okay, that Papa John's personal pan pizza was the most expensive pizza ever purchased.

The real crime here, however, is that the pizza was a pineapple pizza, etc..

Three stories in the next daily. He spoke to the lawyers and we got to get some legal out of the way about the Henry food is the candy. They don't reflect the views of her family. It's all informational. Just so you know, we're not recommending any securities. No, it's not a research report or investment advice, not an offer of a sale of a security by next is digestible business news for you. If I need some LLC member favor APC for our first story, Jack and I have found the ground zero of Zach thinks, oh my God, we've been waiting to cover this.

Facebook's new product experimentation team, also known as Zuck Team six. That's actually just what we're calling it. But if you work at Facebook and you share that idea, I can take a screenshot of it. We would love to see it, Nick. They don't use Facebook, Twitter, Facebook workplace, which is perfect to talk about another Zuckerberg item, snackers. We've been asking for your favorite stories of the year for like our best of twenty twenty snacks for the worst year after a frequently requested story by the Snackers was any type of ziqing any type, as there are so many ziqing.

It was the year of the ZIQING. But guess what snackers the Zach strikes again. Facebook is reportedly about to launch a new app called Super. Pretty straight forward here. This is going to let users pay celebrities to appear in your live video chats. Sounds really novel. Sounds like it clears nuking of Cameo, which lets users pay celebrities to appear in their live videos. Literally the same definition. You can drop twelve hundred bucks, get Snoop to show up at the candle lighting at your bar mitzvah through Facebook.

Or you could get a more see list. Affordable celebrity like Kate Flannery, who is Meredith at the office. She can do her best Dwight Schrute impression for just one hundred eighty bucks. In the meantime, though, Facebook's cameo knockoff is going to be launched soon and it's actually going to be like a whole separate app.

Yeah, they're probably going to require you login with your Facebook account and then you can, like, do a video event with your Facebook friends.

And we noticed this game courtesy of our friends over at Bloomberg and a whole bunch of WHTM people familiar with the Matter Snackers, a ZIQING when Facebook copies the core product or feature of another company, often doing it better than said company. It's two syllables. It's a verb. We've seen a bunch of them. But get this, Mark Zuckerberg has apparently set up an entire team at Facebook. Committed to Zucchet. It's called the New Product Experimentation Team, and it's full of entrepreneurs and uncreative creatives get to think of this is like an internal accelerator to build up startup ideas into reality.

Except these are all someone else's ideas, right? Formed in July of twenty nineteen, the new product experimentation team has launched ten new products and most of them are clear copycats from what was already out there from competition. The latest example. This is this super thing we were just talking about, which is a sucking of the previous app known as Cami.

Now this team was formed in July of twenty nineteen. So technically this team can't take credit for all the Zuckerman's of the past, including the original Zach, the original Zach. I mean, this goes back to Instagram stories which sucked Snapchat the the original Zach.

But if you are creating a product that is workable in the future, you better watch out for the new product experimentation team. By the way, Jack, I would love to hear how Facebook stuck new product experimentation team on a Patagonia fleece. So we decided to rename this team for you. Zuck Team six.

Beware Snackers. They're dangerous. They'll duck anything that connects people. Chicago does logistics, Facebook does connecting. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Facebook? Twenty twenty is Facebook's year of the ZIQING because it can't acquire the competition anymore. All right. So let's look back on the history here in twenty, twelve and twenty fourteen, Facebook saw threats coming from Instagram and WhatsApp sort of acquired both those companies.

But now Facebook has realized that big acquisitions like that, they would probably get blocked by the government on concern of them being more of a monopoly.

Oh, great example of this. Lately, Facebook seen a threat from Tic TAC in twenty twenty, but it knows it can't buy the company right now, so it just copies them with a little thing called a real's instead from like twenty ten to twenty fifteen. Facebook plucked the competition.

That's when they bought up WhatsApp and Instagram from twenty sixteen to today. Facebook sucked the competition. That's when they've been copying Tic-Tac with something like really these two strategies have worked really well so far. Facebook's worth like eight hundred billion dollars, but Washington, DC won't let either of those strategies happen anymore.

So going forward, Facebook may actually have to come up with original ideas. Facebook might actually have to come up with original products that are simply better than the competition. For our second story, we have got a new biggest cannabis company on planet Earth, Africa, until Red just merged, because that's pretty much the only thing they can do right now.

Yeah, it's all you can be doing right now. I mean, both stocks rose. Investors bless this marriage. Honestly, one of the last big mergers of twenty twenty.

Now, basically, all of these cannabis mergers that we're seeing, they're playing geographic Thoma.

And here's how this goes down. If you're a cannabis company, Yelich, you don't know where legalization is going to happen next. So you kind of feel the social pressure to be everywhere. So Apria has planted a bunch of seeds literally in Germany. Yep. But to rain, meanwhile, has been farming in Portugal. Now both are headquartered in Canada, but only one is distributing to Israel so far. Yeah, kind of reminds me when our buddy Timmy used to text us, oh, I can be uptown, but I can also get downtown to the parties downtown because I'm in the East Village, but I can also get to the West Village.

And then we found out he was just in Montauk the whole time. But a key aspect of this deal is that recreational cannabis is a more lucrative industry to pursue than medical cannabis.

Yeah, if you're a cannabis company, those are the two ways you're making money. And when it comes to medical marijuana, there's a lot of friction with the prescriptions. The health care industry is full of red tape. That's why Jack and I thought the most fascinating part of this deal is the hidden recreational surprise baked into Hillary and Afra beverages, simply drinks. No one's talking about it. But that was the hidden synergy. Apria one half of this merger, they acquired a microbrewery based in Atlanta called Sweet Water Brewery.

I tried it once on a Delta airplane. It's actually on the Delta menu while that this was on the menu, because if you check out the flavors going on over, it's water. We're talking like the four twenty EPA. That's extra pale ale. Or how about the hop hash easy IPA. And unlike Gummies, for example, a CBD edible that has tiny ish reach, beer has big reach. There's forty thousand retailers selling Sweetwater beer, so forty thousand retailers are selling a beer owned by cannabis company that's now the biggest owner.

Meanwhile, the other half of this merger, till they partner with Budweiser, they're planning to make Bud Light CBD. So together, Jack, they're thinking that these two companies are recognizing a need for something called a gateway.

Goodey to get mainstream. They need a product that fits into people's routines. Yeah. And if you're looking at the cannabis products out there right now, you know, gummies, tinctures, smoking, those aren't necessarily part of everyone's consistent routine and adult beverage, though.

On a Saturday night when you're letting loose, that's part of a at least a weekly routine.

It's a gateway goodie. So, Jack. What's the takeaway for our buddies over in the cannabis industry? Cannabis is basically freshman year Harry Potter. He hasn't done anything, but he's getting all the attention from everyone snackers, this new biggest cannabis company on planet Earth. Get this, it only has a combined annual sales of a billion dollars, actually under a billion dollars. What this cannabis mega merger makes in one year, Coca-Cola makes in 10 days.

So it turns out that the combined value of Turei in Africa is this new company is less than half a lift.

This may be the least valuable, most valuable company in its industry on Earth.

The key here is that the United States is expected to become like 70 percent of the global recreational marijuana market soon, eventually.

But right now, marijuana, cannabis, it's all a federal illegal drug, so the cannabis industry can't nearly reach its potential.

In the meantime, all these big cannabis companies, all they can do is just wait and merge and get a whole bunch of attention for their potential. Just like Harry pre nimbies. Two thousand for our third and final story stock just hit a two point eight billion dollar valuation, basically as the New York Stock Exchange for sneakers. It's not on the New York Stock Exchange yet. It's still a small company. It's private. We're straight up missing out. But stock could be on the way to its IPO.

Side of the story. And we honestly thought it was perfect timing because remember last week we were talking about that. Twenty one year old kid sold his collection of Cyprien t shirts for two million dollars.

He wasn't even born when the first t shirts were made. Key takeaway here. Some people invest in stocks, some in real estate, some in art, others invest in Jordan's ease's and off-White sneakers.

You got to go with the size eleven and a half. That's where the money is. Which brings us to stock. It's an online marketplace for limited edition sneakers. But they also expanded to a bunch of other things, basically like eBay.

But instead of wearing pleated khakis, they're wearing six hundred dollars sweatpants. That's right.

Rare street where hard to find handbags, electronics, baseball cards. These are the things that can be bought and sold on stock X.

And this has been blowing up during the pandemic because you're sitting at home and they just got 10 million Black Friday weekend shoppers and their first profitable quarter ever.

Which brings us to this week's news. They just raised two hundred seventy five million dollars from investors to keep growing, which doubled their valuation to two point eight billion dollars, about a third of a lift. Also, Jack, we got to give a little celebration to our friends over in Ann Arbor. That's right. If you jump on I ninety four and drive about 30 miles east, you'll get to Detroit where Stock X is based. And this is the biggest venture capital deal in Michigan history.

This is Nick. This is Jack.

And that's Google Maps, apparently. Nick, guess who a celebrity investor is to this Detroit based company?

Oh, my God. When I heard Steve Aoki, I mean, Steve Aoki, Benihana legend, also Eminem of Detroit fame. But the real star here is a guy named Scott Cutler. Jack and I checked out the LinkedIn executive at eBay, the online auction site.

He was also an executive at the New York Stock Exchange, the Ojai Stock Exchange. Well, he's the founder of Stock X, so this is basically his third online marketplace where he connects buyers with sellers on Stock X..

A buyer who wants a rare Chanel double flab handbag, who can make a bid offering to pay five thousand dollars if they can actually give you that Chanel bag.

So if your plush closet is filled with that five thousand rare Chanel double flop handbag, you could accept that bid, send that handbag to stock X. And then here's the key. They will verify that bag and then they'll send it to the buyer. It's crucial that they verify because they need to ensure it's the real deal handbag and not some knockoff. And then stock takes a cut of the deal. Now there's one other rule of stock X. You don't talk about stock X, every item sold must be brand spanking new in mint condition.

Never use stuff gets rejected. Oh, plus stock X decides what actually ends up getting sold on their marketplace. So they're basically curating street style from the comfort of their website. We like to call it a Crock's market, not a stock market. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our bunnies? Running the Crocs market over its stock X trust determines whether a new market succeeds or fails to snack. Because when you add up everything Jack and I just said at the end of the day, stock is main, skill is price transparency.

They can strategically convince both the buyers and sellers that the price this thing is selling for is the right price. And that's particularly important because there is a challenge with rare items in deciding what these rare things are actually worth. You can't just Google some painting that's a one of a kind to figure out how much it's worth. And if you got a pair of Reebok question, basketball shoes and Allen Iverson seventy Sixers colors of which there was only one hundred made, you got a similar situation as Monet.

The seller of those shoes only wants to sell if it's for a good price. And on the other side, the buyer doesn't want to get ripped off. So stockades, this thing like really fascinating here, they make their website look like a stock market, you got green arrows going up, red arrows going down, a 52 week high and low that those Alan Ivor's basketball shoes sold for. And then Jackson, my favorite part. They actually assign a seven letter ticker symbol to each of the shoes on the website.

Not as creative, though, the ticker symbol as we hoped for now that we thought we could talk with them.

So with stocks, you can see previous transactions of the same item you're trying to buy. And what the price is that that item sold for like a few weeks ago. So it's just like Nasdaq. You're getting comfort in the quantitative Naess that price transparency brings confidence to the market. And that's why it dropped 600 bucks on the Nike Air Force One. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over that? Facebook has a Zuck team six. The orders are to copy the competition, first acquired, then they copied.

Now they must innovate.

For our second story, the largest cannabis company on Earth is just going to be called. Right. They got rid of the Harry Potter needed to justify his popularity. Cannabis needs US legalization for our third and final story. Stock X treats rare issues like financial assets. Does it because they are and price transparency is bringing the trust to those markets. Now time for a snack that sent in by Mahir Kumar and the entire University of Chicago Media, Entertainment and Sports Club who Jack and I got to chat with just yesterday.

The Booth School of Business at Chicago doesn't do logistics. Yeah, most likely.

They also happen at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business to have an antique trading kiosk of particular importance.

They probably call it a trading booth, actually. And it is one of the original methods for trading stocks at the New York Stock Exchange from nineteen twenty nine to nineteen eighty.

Now, what's so important about this booth over at Booth is that it's only one of 12 original kiosks that was donated by the New York Stock Exchange to a whole bunch of universities and museums.

This is like the Plymouth Rock of American Capitalism, except there are 11 other Plymouth rocks, probably at six other business schools.

Snackers. You look fantastic today before the holidays, Jack. And I would love this small gift if you could drop down, give us a five star view and share with us how much you enjoy your snacks. That would mean the world to us. And I promise Nick and I will be back tomorrow for another episode. We can't wait. We'll see you there. And before we go, stackers, congrats to Mandy. She just got the new job over in Vancouver.

So did a at Capital One. Big congrats and happy birthday to snacker Sofia Aguirre, cookware in Mexico City, Mexico. And happy birthday to Richard Melby in San Diego, California, and Kyle Demurrals over in Ambler, Pennsylvania, and Christine Tran in Santa Ana. And Olivia Yagman in Ventura, California, Aventura. And happy four year anniversary to Viña and Somaly in Euless, Texas. Not Ulisses, no less. Texas nailed it. Nailed to check.

The Robinhood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the hosts who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets Inc or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a recommendation to buy or sell any security and is not an offer or sale of a security. The podcast is also not a research report and is not intended to serve as the basis of any investment decision.

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