Alexandra Scaggs Is Back At Alphaville And Has A Question About Coinbase (COIN)

I didn't know people returned to da 'ville. 

I mean folks like Bryce and Paul have the keys to the city village, and now and then Neil Hume popped in, to great acclaim, but I always thought of FT Alphaville as the place where journos developed some wicked chops and then moved on to bigger and better things. So here's Ms. Scaggs, back from Barron's in what I hope is a permanent position: 

What were all those 6,200 Coinbasers doing anyway? 

FIFO > FOMO

If only Coinbase’s recruitment drive over the past year had brought in some human resources experts. 

The $11bn valued digital token shop revealed it was firing 1,100 people — about 18 per cent of its staff — on the back of a hiring freeze, retractions of job offers, and an employee revolt that was met by CEO Brian Armstrong telling employees in a Twitter thread: “quit and find a company to work at that you believe in!”....

....MUCH MORE, including a very profound question.

In 2018 Alexandra had had one of the most forthright comment back-and-forth's I've ever seen.

From 2021's "I Miss Alexandra Scaggs' Writing At FT Alphaville":

Oh sure, she's at Barron's and covering fixed income, first-rate stuff but something's different.

I think it might be the commenters up in the cheap seats. Here's an example from 2018:

....This is one of the funniest series of comments I've seen in ages, reminiscent of one of the great cartoons, which see after the jump.

At FT Alphaville's "B.R.E.A.M. (Bonds Rule Everything Around Me)" linked immediately below:

...Miss Piggy 3 days ago

I really wish I could understand this article.

Alex Scaggs FT 2 days ago

@Miss Piggy Anything in particular I could make more clear? Have you read our previous coverage of US tax reform & its implications for multinational companies' balance sheets?

Or maybe: Any chance you've seen the US financial-news meme about "$1 TRILLION OF CORPORATE CASH HELD ABROAD"? This post is about that. US tax reform has totally removed companies' incentive to keep that ~$1tn of investments offshore, but it's not clear what companies will actually do about it. 

(to be fair the US tax code is notoriously byzantine and awful, and I have spent way too many hours of my life looking at it. so... it might've fried my brain. if so, sorry, back to crypto quips.)

delta 2 days ago

@Miss Piggy ..  .. basically the offshore money was already deployed (mostly) in america in corp/govt bonds ..  

CThwaites 2 days ago

@Miss Piggy was already deployed (mostly) in america in corp/govt bonds ..
and that there are going to be more long-term bonds coming to the market (not a good thing)

Miss Piggy 2 days ago

@Alex Scaggs ok, thanks for responding. I know about capital repatriation, prior US tax code was onerous so better to keep offshore; Trump changes tax law and now funds will go back home to USA. Fine. It's the other linkages such as this section....

"Reverse Yankee bonds typically have a cross-currency basis swap stapled to them. A buyback of reverse Yankee debt would most definitely trigger the buyback of associated cross-currency swaps, which, all else equal, would make the two to five year segment of the €/$ cross-currency basis curve less negative"

So Reverse Yankee bonds was defined in prior paragraph. I do know about Interest Rate Swaps (IRS), certainly plain vanilla same currency LIBOR vs fixed; I also know about cross currency variant of IRS. I seem to remember basis swaps were swapping one index for another so LIBOR for SONIA. So is the cross-currency basis swap swapping USD LIBOR for EUR LIBOR? And is the difference in the EUR and USD yield curves expressed in a third curve, the "cross-currency basis swap curve"? And does the liquidation of reverse Yankee bonds impact the "cross-currency basis swap curve" in the 2 to 5 year segment?

You have to admit this is quite complicated. Money market linkages can be quite arcane. I do not have a Bloomberg terminal. Are cross currency basis swap curve price published in FT?....

And from Garry Trudeau's 1973 Cambodian refugees arrive in D.C. series at Doonesbury:

 

To her eternal credit Alexandra comes back with a sincere response:

Alex Scaggs FT1 day ago

@Miss Piggy @Alex Scaggs I totally get it, I find them very complex as well -- that section from Pozsar was a bit of an aside for readers who follow money markets, to be honest. But you've got a point, I'll aim to spend a bit more time unpacking this stuff when I write about it....MORE