Alternative Investing Report - May 21, 2025

*as of 5/20; Sources: S&P, BTC, FTSE, DJRE, CL50

New York’s spring art auction season saw the three major auction houses - Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips - sell more than $1.1 billion in art, a hefty number that nonetheless came in short of the pre-sale low estimate of $1.2 billion. Some of that shortfall came from the biggest disappointments of the week - a $70 million Giacometti sculpture that went unsold and a $30 million Warhol painting that was pulled from the block mid-auction. The results of their auctions led to a major leadership change at Phillips, which saw its global chairwoman and its President of the Americas both resign.

➨ TAKEAWAY: The week was not a complete failure, as most auctions met the low end of expectations, and there were promising signs for female artists and at lower price points. The top end of the market saw significant pullback, as only six lots sold for more than $20 million compared to twelve last May. Overall, it does seem as if the uncertainty of the current economic situation put a damper on the market, which has seen a lull over the past few years.

Two separate bills were recently introduced in Congress to modify the accredited investor standard, which restricts retail investors from participating in many private market offerings. One of the bills would allow investors to qualify as accredited based on education or professional experience in addition to income and net worth. The other would direct the SEC to create an accredited investor test that anyone could take in order qualify.

➨ TAKEAWAY: These bills come as new SEC chair Paul Atkins has stated his willingness to open up private markets further to retail investors by allowing fund managers to invest more into private assets. Additionally, SEC commissioner Hester Pierce said that she believes the accredited investor standard should be eliminated entirely. Needless to say, any change in the current status quo could be monumental and might change the retail investing landscape significantly.

🚀 IPO watchlist: This list of the eight most likely VC-backed startups to go public is headed by the fintech Klarna, and includes other big names like chat platform Discord, design software startup Figma, and crypto stablecoin issuer Circle.

📊 No cut ‘til September: Two different Federal Reserve Presidents, John Williams of New York and Raphael Bostic of Atlanta, made remarks to suggest that the Fed is not going to consider cutting interest rates at least until its September meeting.

🏢 Blue Owl infrastructure fund: The alternative asset manager announced a $7 billion digital infrastructure fund that will will focus on developing and buying data centers. It exceeded the fundraising goal of $4 billion, showing demand for this sector of industrial real estate remains high.

🪙 JPMorgan allowing Bitcoin: Despite CEO Jamie Dimon’s skepticism, the largest U.S. bank is now going to allow its clients to buy Bitcoin, another sign of the digital asset reaching the mainstream.

🚨 Crowdfunding fraud sentence: Elie Schwartz - who used the real estate crowdfunding platform CrowdStreet to defraud investors in a $63 million scheme - was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison.

⌚ Apollo 9 gold watch: A rare 18-karat gold Omega Speedmaster Professional watch given to astronaut Russell Schweickart to commemorate the Apollo 9 mission is up for auction and has already passed $100,000 in bids.

Of all the crypto tokens in the top-100 by market cap, the native token of the Pi Network had the biggest drop in price this week. The crypto project has achieved notoriety by allowing users to “mine” the token from their phones by tapping a button. The token’s price reached a high of $2.97 in February, but fell swiftly after it became clear that neither Binance nor Coinbase was planning to list it. The coin recently rose in price on hopes that founder Nicolas Kokkalis’s speech at the Consensus crypto convention would reveal big news. When it didn’t, the price came right back down, and in the absence of any catalyst, the gradual decline could continue.