Alternative Investing Report - August 7, 2025

*as of 8/6; Sources: S&P, BTC, FTSE, DJRE, CL50

As the U.S. housing market trends towards becoming a buyer’s market, it’s the major metro areas in the Rust Belt that are holding up the best. Milwaukee and Chicago lead the way when looking at homes sold, sale price per square foot, days until sale, and whether inventory is increasing or decreasing. Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and New York round out the top 5, as the Midwest and Northeast continue to outperform the rest of the country. On the flip side, Las Vegas ranks last, with a 10.2% decline in price per square foot and a 44.8% gain in inventory. It is also worth nothing that three of the bottom seven ranking metros are in Florida.

➨ TAKEAWAY: Increasing inventory, stubbornly high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty have mostly brought the housing market to a halt the past few years. But real estate investing is a truly a local game, and what matters more than the national landscape is what your specific area looks like. Even in the South and West that are struggling on the whole, there are still areas - such as the D.C. and Northern California suburbs - that are performing well.

Vincent co-founders Eric Cantor and Adam Katz discuss the newest trend in crypto: publicly-traded treasury companies, and what investors should know about them. (7 mins)

VC firms such as General Catalyst and Thrive Capital have raised billion-dollar funds to pursue “rollups,” a strategy of buying a number of small businesses within an industry and merging them to ideally boost profits through efficiencies. This has been a long-standing private equity strategy, but VC has been drawn to it specifically by the promise that AI can offer to companies that are slow to adopt new technology.

➨ TAKEAWAY: One way that VC could reap a huge benefit is if they can buy businesses at a “service multiple” which is relatively low due to the perception that there isn’t much growth potential, and then sell them at a higher “tech multiple” down the line. But for this model to make sense for VCs, they will essentially have to act as PE firms, and this is an avenue likely only open to the bigger, more established VC firms.

🤖 OpenAI share sale: The AI startup is reportedly exploring a share sale at a valuation of $500 billion, which would make it the most valuable private company in the world. It would also represent a significant leap over its last valuation of $300 billion established in March.

💵 Rise in defaults: There has been an “alarming” rise in the number of selective defaults in the private credit market, which could be a way to keep the traditional default rate artificially low to project a stronger image of the market than the actual numbers would suggest.

🏢 Sun Belt recovery: Office properties are seeing improved leasing activity and rent growth in cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, and Nashville, with premium space particularly in demand.

🤼 Vintage wrestling collectibles: Wrestling cards and collectibles such as match-used apparel, particularly from the 1980s, have grown and seen increased attention in the past few years, and Hulk Hogan’s recent death is only likely to boost demand in the short-run.

🪙 More salaries paid in crypto: The number of crypto professionals now paid in crypto tripled in 2024, with most being paid in the dollar-based stablecoins USDC and USDt.

📖 First edition Hobbit: One of just 1,500 first editions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 book sold for more than $60,000, nearly four times the pre-sale high estimate.

As AI advances exponentially in its capabilities, it introduces more ethical questions that in some cases could have been hard to foresee. This week, former CNN anchor Jim Acosta published an interview with Joaquin Oliver, which is noteworthy because Oliver was killed in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. Just a little virtual necromancy was needed, as Oliver’s parents created an interactive AI version of their son to answer questions about gun control, sports, and his favorite movies. While Oliver’s parents were the driving force behind this, it is easy to imagine situations where the images of dead people can be co-opted without their family’s permission. As AI continues to develop, a lot of questions are going to move from “can we do this?” to “should we do this?”