Case Study of Crypto Failure

 This article describes a few of the high profile cases of crypto collapse in 2022.

1. Terraform Labs

Terraform Labs is a Singapore based fintech company.

Its tokens include UST, a algorithm based stable coin, and LUNA, which is designed to absorb stable coin volatility.

Its Defi products includes:

1.  Anchor, a savings product that paid as high as 20% on UST deposits.

2. Mirror, allows investors to trade synthetic assets, such as Tesla, Microsoft shares

3. Chai, a payment app that has 2 million users in South Korea

UST lost its peg to US dollar in May 2022. Overnight, UST and Luna literally became worthless tokens. The whole Terra ecosystem collapsed. Many investors lost millions of savings.

The founder of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon (South Korea citizen), becomes a wanted person on Interpol red notice.

https://coingeek.com/terra-do-kwon-now-wanted-in-195-countries-after-interpol-issues-red-notice/

His last known location is Singapore.

2. 3AC Capital

Three Arrows Capital (3AC) is a Singapore based crypto hedge fund. At one point managed, it manages 10 billions of assets. It collapsed after Terra UST crashed. It is supposed to hedge its exposure by buying and selling crypto based on risk adjusted returns. It probably collapse due to self inflicted bad investment decision process.

It made one directional investments in Luna Classic (LUNC), staked Ether (stETH), without hedging.

Its co-founder are Zhu Su (Singapore citizen since 2016, born in China), Kyle Davies (Singapore citizen, born in US), previously both worked as trader for Credit Suisse.

Zhu Su is selling his $48 million bungalow in Singapore.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/07/01/three-arrows-capitals-su-zhu-looks-to-sell-35m-singapore-house/

3. Hodlnaut

It is a crypto investment firm, started since 2019, based in Singapore. The co-founders are Simon Lee and JunTao Zhu

JunTao Zhu (SMU graduate) previously worked for Credit Suisse.

In March 2022, Hodlnaut obtained approval for major payment institute license from MAS. In August 2022, it filed for judiciary management with Singapore high court.

In March 2021, an independent review confirmed it had $106 million assets.

In August 2022 , its assets was down to 69 cents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodlnaut

4. Celsius Network

Its founder Alex Mashinsky (dual Israel - US citizen, born in Ukraine), started Celsius Network (HQ in London), in 2017. Alex is a serial entrepreneur. He was working on VoIP protocol previosuly.

Celsius is a crypto lending and borrowing platform. Investors lend out their crypto and earn returns, up to 18%.

Alex withdrew $10 million from Celsius in May 2022. The withdrawals came as customers were withdrawing assets in large quantities while the company was nearing bankruptcy.

Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022.

5. Voyager Digital

It is a crypto asset broker started in 2017, in US. It provides lending and borrowing of crypto.

It was founded by Stephen Ehrlich.

It collapsed in part due to 3AC. It filed for bankruptcy in July 2022.

6. BlockFi

It is a crypto lending platform started in 2017, in US (HQ in NYC). It was founded by Zac Prince and Flori Marquez.

It lends U.S. dollars against bitcoin and other cryptocurrency collateral, as well as accepting deposits of cryptocurrencies which pay interest to the depositor. The high yield savings offers interest as high as 9%.

It also has Bitcoin credit card and Bitcoin trust.

It owned licenses from various state in US. https://blockfi.com/licenses

It almost collapsed and was rescued by FTX  in June 2022.

Cakes get stolen on PancakeSwap

Last month, when accessing Pancake Swap, i was prompted to select Auto CAKE. I clicked it, and the CAKE and BNB in my Metamask were stolen. Cryptos in my Metamask account were wiped out.

My CAKE was sent to address 0x50FD6C573a0C86C939f301299fb49FDeBc996120

Be extra careful when using Metamask with Pancake Swap.

Liquid Swap vs Launch Pool

Today we talk about Liquid Swap and Launch Pool on Binance.com. 

Liquid Swap

Liquid swap (LP) is an automated market maker (AMM) to facilitate crypto pair exchange. AMM earns bid ask spread and commission income, and shares the income with liquidity provider. 

As an example, when you choose to provide liquidity for USDT/BNB pair, whenever other users trade USDT/BNB, part of their commission fee would be distributed back to you.

Liquidity swap is able to provide investors with high return, as seen below.

To add liquidity, you choose the currency pair, then click add, a new window will be shown.

You can add currency pair, or just add a single currency. If adding currency pair, it will be 1:1 ratio of the two cryptos in the currency pair. This is to make the liquidity pool having the same amount of both cryptos.

By participating in a liquid swap , you become a liquidity provider. Your participated portion becomes a share of the crypto exchange provider. The possible risk is impermanent loss.

Launch pool

It is also called launchpad in Binance. 

Basically, a new crypto project is started in launch pool. They use BNB to do the mining. You stake your BNB , and get rewarded with the new token.

That is all for today.

Thai Hospital Stocks Review: BCH vs BH

This write-up will attempt to compare BCH and BH company. Both are listed on SET Thailand.

Bangkok Chain Hospital (BCH) operates its business as a group of hospitals which consists of twelve hospitals and one polyclinics in Bangkok and upcountry to provide medical services in the level of primary-tertiary care under three hospital groups

1. World Medical Hospital targets high-income cash patients and international patients. 

2. Kasemrad International Hospital targets upper middle-income cash patients.

3. Kasemrad Hospital targets middle-income cash patients and social security patients.

4. Karunvej Hospital targets social security patients.

Its biggest shareholder is Mr. Chalerm Harnphanich (32.6%). The company is controlled by the HARNPHANICH family.

BCH	29/12/2017	28/12/2018	30/12/2019	30/12/2020
Last Price(Baht)	16.2	16.7	17.1	13.6
Market Cap.	40398.72	41645.59	42643.09	33914.97
EPS (Baht)	0.37	0.44	0.46	0.38
P/E	48.25	37.9	36.68	28.45
P/BV	8.18	7.66	7.09	5.12
Book Value per share (Baht)	1.98	2.18	2.41	2.66
Dvd. Yield(%)	1.05	1.2	1.35	1.69

Looking at the table above , the EPS hovers around 0.37 to 0.46. However, the P/E drops from 48.25 to 28.45.

Bumrungrad Hospital (BH) operates a private hospital namely Bumrungrad International hospital in Bangkok, which serves both local and international clients. The Company provides complete healthcare services for both outpatients and inpatients and also invests in the related health care services businesses.

Its biggest shareholder is Bangkok Dusit Medical Services (23%).

BH	29/12/2017	28/12/2018	30/12/2019	30/12/2020
Last Price(Baht)	189	187.5	147	120
Market Cap.	137722.19	136640.88	107139.68	95350.28
EPS (Baht)	5.41	5.7	5.14	1.33
P/E	35.88	33.36	27.99	49.81
P/BV	8.86	7.84	5.62	5.18
Book Value per share (Baht)	21.34	23.91	26.18	23.15
Dvd. Yield(%)	1.32	1.44	1.97	2.59

Looking at the table above, its EPS is dropping sharply from 5.14 to 1.33 due to Covid19. At the same time, its P/E ratio increase from 27.99 to 49.81. 

The Thai healthcare sector is on the path to recovery. The patients numbers is forecast to increase following the expected Covid19 containment in 2021. BCH shows its earnings resilience as it generates income from Social Security Office (37% of revenues in 2020). BCH's P/E ratio relative to BH is 28.45/49.81 = 0.57. BCH is undervalued relative to BH.

Thai Retail Stocks Review - CPF vs BJC

Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) is a vertically integrated agro-industrial and food company

• 1. Production and distribution of animal feed
• 2. Animal breeding, meat processing
• 3. Semi-cooked and cooked meat products, ready to eat meals, restaurants and retail shops

Three year trend

Item	2019	2018	2017
Sales (MB)	544,875	555,503	515,197
Total Assets (MB)	634,051	628,091	593,497
Net Income (MB)	18,456	15,531	15,259
Year End Stock Price (B)	27.50	24.60	24.00

Berli Jucker (BJC) is a supply chain, distribution and retail company. Thai Charoen Corporation (TCC) is major shareholder of the company. TCC and Thaibev(SGX:Y92) are owned by the same Thai family.

1. Modern retail supply chain - Big C Supercenter, Pure Pharmacy

2. Packaging supply chain - Glass packaging products, aluminium can packaging, plastic packaging

3. Customer supply chain - food, personal care, household products

4. Healthcare supply chain - medical supplies

5. Others - AsiaBooks

Three year trend

Item	2019	2018	2017
Sales (MB)	174,037	172,196	164,197
Total Assets (MB)	325,804	324,059	315,058
Net Income (MB)	7,065	7,248	5,974
Year End Stock Price (B)	43.25	50.75	66.00

Cross Sectional Analysis (for year 2019)

TBC

Trade war that is easy to win

Donald Trump once declared trade wars are easy to win. 

In June, US applied 25% tariffs on 50 billion of Chinese goods. Three days later, US applied additionally 10% tariffs on 200 billion of Chinese goods. China responded with tariffs on 50 billion of US goods. 

Which country has the advantage in this trade war ? Let us look at it from some perspectives.

1. Trade balance

China import from US : $130 billion

China export to US : $500 billion

US China trade alone accounts for more than 50% of US trade deficit. 

China cannot keep up with US in charging tariff. China will run out of US goods to levy tariffs.

2. Mutual dependency

2.1 China relies on US for its core technology, such as the case of ZTE.

ZTE is banned from buying components from US company.

2.2 China depends on US for its agricultural products.

China import from US for 95 million tonnes of soybean. China produces 14 million tonnes of soybean. If China is determined to self-produced soybean, it would need 506 billion sqm of agricultural land to be self sustainable. China has about 1400 billion sqm of agricultural land. Is it feasible to use up to 33% of agricultural land for the sole purpose of soybean farming? The answer is obvious.

Argentina and Brazil are the number one and two soybean exported in the world. China could import soybean from Brazil. However, the soybean production, distribution, and sales network of Brazilian soybean are controlled by US company.

2.3 US company dependence of China market

GM sells more cars in China than in the US

Apple's 40 billion market in China

3. US dollar domination

3.1 Japan, China, Germany, their foreign reserve is held in USD. They are creditors to US. If they do not lend money to US, US prints its own money. US dollar depreciates. It is not good for the creditors. Therefore they continue to buy US treasury bonds. Furthermore, China is a trading country, the issuance of RMB is based on their reserve in USD. 

3.2 Crude oil is priced in US dollar. To buy oil, USD is needed.

Singapore Stock Analysis: SPH

Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) is listed on Singapore Exchange. This analysis was done on Apr 28, 2018. It is based on 2017 annual report.

1) All the top management in SPH are top scholars.

2) The CEO is granted 4 million ordinary shares accumulatively

3) Retained profit is 2 billion, cash holding is 312 million, investment property is 4 billion, net asset is 4 billion

4) Borrowings to be paid in one year,  is 1 billion

5) The share price on Apr 27 is $2.76, net value per share is $2.5

6) The fcfe is 450 million, pbt is 430 million, ocf is -19 mil (after dividends and income tax).

Conclusion: The fcfe is positive. The share price is close to navps. The ocf  before income tax and dividends is 355 million. The ocf is negative,  because the dividends payment of 300 million is included in the calculation of net cash used in operating activities. The bank borrowing is 275 million.

So the bank borrowing is used to support dividends payment and income tax payment.