- Mark-to-Magic -

by Juan-Miguel Sanchez, CEO and co-founder
3 min reading

Dear Friends,

Imagine that one day you come home from work and suddenly your keys can’t open your door. You try really hard but you are still locked out. Or even worse, imagine that one day you come home from work and your house has vanished. The whole building has disappeared into thin air.
All your belongings, your furniture, your pets, all gone forever. What a nightmare that would be!

Fortunately this crazy stuff only happens in the movies. In reality your property cannot just disappear. Also, strict property rights and laws ensure that nobody can just take your home away from you.

But while this cannot happen in real estate, it just happened in the world of crypto assets. The users of the now infamous FTX crypto exchange woke up one day and found out that their accounts, containing crypto tokens and some very real money, had disappeared and they may never get them back.

Up until the day before the collapse, these users could log in to their account and could trade crypto tokens, deposit money, and watch the crypto holdings move up and down in value. The reality though was different. In the background, the FTX exchange was artificially inflating the price of their tokens, amongst other violations they committed.

Normally these tokens should be valued transparently at their real market price, a widely applied process known as Mark-to-Market. Unfortunately, through price manipulation FTX was using the lack of transparency and was valuing them higher, at a price that was disconnected from reality. It was like magic; the price of tokens was going up and the users were duped to believe that they were getting richer by the day. It was Mark-to-Magic.

At Artemis Assets we love Real Estate because it builds and protects wealth. The property markets are liquid enough for investors to enter and exit quickly. They are also transparent enough for investors to know what is the value of their properties at any time. Finally, they are durable enough for investors to pass them on to the next generations.

For example, one of the properties under Artemis management was built in the late 19th century. Talking about solid investments!

Artemis will soon be sending out more opportunities your way. Feel free forward this newsletter to anyone who is interested in building tangible wealth without the risk of losing everything in one day.

Until the next one!

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