So Chamath has been making a lot of noise attacking Robinhood and implying there's a conspiracy because it sells retail transaction data (payment for order flow) to Ken Griffin's Citadel.

He wants you use his platform sofi, but it turns out, they literally do the same thing? 1/n

Here's Chamath's S-4 to take SoFi Public via his SPAC (patriotically incorporated in the cayman islands).

These basically have to be filed as part of any merger or acquisition by a public company.

So lots of details about SoFi's business!

https://t.co/Rs7gYPU9Ao
What do we see? Well it turns out SoFi, like RH, says it earns a good chunk of change from selling payment for order flow!
On SoFi's website, they claim this is in the "best interest of consumers" because it allows commission free trading. Huh!

Notice their execution partner is the clearinghouse Apex, which also restricted $GME and $AMC trades like RH. But it goes farther!
https://t.co/4TLPGMfy7v
Back to the S-4: Apex isn't just their partner, SoFi literally owns 16.8% of Apex!

That means, as they're happy to tell you, SoFi benefits from Apex earning fees for pay-for-order flows from all sorts of exchanges and market makers! (not just the ones on SoFi itself!)
Apex is required to disclose the details of its payment for order flow quarterly for "non-directed orders."

That means when the client hasn't specified which exchange they want their broker to use - basically most commission free retail I imagine.

https://t.co/YxYK9qWOtX
What do we see? Citadel was one of the top three firms paying for Apex's total order flows in S&P 500, non S&P500, and options in December 2020 alone.

Thanks for the business Ken! We probably shouldn't assume the other firms listed are any more noble than Citadel.
So far from this being Chamath vs Ken Griffin, it appears to be that Chamath is actually going into business with Griffin and SoFi's user data is yet another asset being monetized. Hell, SoFi (via apex) is selling everyone's data!

Almost like the only way to win is not to play!
As a final aside when businesses go pubic the involved parties have to file notices of all potentially relevant communications in 425s, which in 2021 leads to very funny filings that are just pictures of Chamath's tweets.

https://t.co/IDIDWxSbg8
I always feel like I need a cigarette after hitting send on the "publish all tweets" in a thread blast

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The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?