In today’s newsletter we discuss MrBeast might be close at a $100 million dollar deal to do a show for Amazon Prime Video, China’s real estate market is in freefall after Evergrande was ordered to liquidate, Changpeng “CA” Zhao offered to put up his $4.5 billion equity stake in Biance.US as bond in order to leave the U.S. before beginning his prison sentence, it turns out Taylor Swift isn’t show on TV as much as some haters think when she attends her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs NFL football games, and NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has taken its final flight on Mars.

irl Media NEWS YouTube Channel

We’ve just launched our new irl Media NEWS YouTube Channel @irlMediaNEWS

Do us a solid and subscribe to our new channel, and check out our latest videos:

Pentatonix Singer Scott Hoying Drops $4 Million On New House

Business

The real estate market in China is in freefall after Evergrande was ordered to liquidate by a court in Hong Kong after amassing 2.39 trillion yuan (or $333 billion for those of you who can’t convert yuan to U.S. dollars in their heads).

The liquidation order comes as the Chinese real estate firm and its overseas creditors failed to agree on how to restructure the company’s massive $33 billion in debt after having tried to negotiate over the last 19 months. The Shenzhen-based developer had already filed for bankruptcy in New York back in 2023.

So liquidation it is!

I can’t begin to explain how bad this is for China’s real estate market, but also for the investors outside of China who scooped up their debt obligations for pennies on the dollar in the belief that the Chinese government would never let Evergrande fail.

They hoped the Chinese would view Evergrande as China’s version of the United State’s banks that were too big to fail like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, but it turns out the Chinese thought Evergrande was more like Lehman Brothers, and they let it fail.

Now the Chinese real estate market will going through a period of constriction, and ultimately the market will right-size itself, but most likely at the expense of not only investors outside of China but also Chinese families who saved up and bought real estate from Evergrande that they will never be able to live in or sell.

Evergrande, symbol of China’s property crisis, heads to liquidation

Crypto

Most of us will thankfully never have to deal with posting bond to be let out of jail.

Typically the bail process involves putting up 10% of the bond value in order to be let out on your own recognizance.

But the rich do bail a lot differently, or at least they think they can.

Changpeng Zhao, better known in the crypto world at CZ, pleaded guilty to money laundering on Nov. 21, 2023 and is currently free on a $175 million bond in the United States, but he isn’t allowed to leave the country. He’s facing up to 18 months in jail when he is sentenced in February of 2024.

CZ stepped down as Binance’s CEO in November 2022 as part of a $4.3 billion settlement his company Binance made with U.S. regulators in which he admitted to running an unlicensed money-transmitting business and violating the Bank Secrecy Act. CZ himself is responsible for paying a $50 million dollar fine.

Before he begins serving his sentence, he’d just like to travel abroad to the United Arab Emirates to “to see a friend or family member undergoing surgery and staying in a hospital” according to a letter his legal team sent to federal prosecutors who were not impressed.

As you might guess, allowing an international crypto kingpin awaiting sentencing in the U.S. to leave the country to a non-extradition country is sorta a non-starter.

CZ’s final attempt at trying to leave the U.S. while out on bail was for him to pledge his entire equity stake in Binance.US, which, according to the letter to the court, was valued at $4.5 billion based on their last funding round in 2022.

The court said no, No, NO!

So now CZ is holed up in one of his luxury mansions in the U.S. awaiting sentencing without a snowball’s chance in hell of being allowed to leave the country, even if he does have a sick friend or family member in the hospital in the UAE.

CZ tried to pledge his entire Binance stake to leave US in January

Entertainment

Is MrBeast in deal talks with Amazon‘s Prime Video for a reality-competition show worth an estimated $100 million dollars?

The news was first reported by Puck, and later confirmed by Variety, that MrBeast could be hosting his own reality-competition show on Amazon‘s Prime Video.

Important things like the title of this new show, or what its about, haven’t been revealed yet, but the concept sounds like the MrBeast-hosted show would follow the format of his viral YouTube challenges, except now he’ll be getting paid big-time money to make the show and not be giving away a giant corporation’s cash in the form of large cash prizes awarded to the winners of his competitions.

This sounds like a perfect fit for MrBeast’s talents!

We’ve done a lot of stories about MrBeast lately, because frankly he’s in the news every week with a different outlandish video on his YouTube channel that has 233 million subscribers!

If MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, brings his talents to a streaming network , then that could drive some bigtime viewership numbers for Amazon’s Prime Video.

But if you think a $100 million dollar deal with Amazon’s Prime Video would change MrBeast then you don’t really get him.

Jimmy Donaldson is already the highest-earning internet content creator out there. According to Forbest, MrBeast generated an estimated $82 million in earnings over the 12-month period between June 2022 to June 2023. When you consider how quickly MrBeast’s YouTube channel is continuing to grow that number is sure to only go up in 2024.

Adding another $100 million to his bank account will only empower MrBeast to up his productions, which usually cost him several million dollars to write, film, edit, and include the insane cash prizes he doles out.

I’m pumped to watch MrBeast’s new Amazon Prime Show when it comes out!

MrBeast in Talks for TV Show on Amazon’s Prime Video

Sports

It turns out TV broadcasters are focusing less on Taylor Swift when she attends her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs NFL football games than many think, but that’s not going to stop the haters from hating.

One of my favorite sports reporters Erin Andrews said it best Travis Kelce scored a touchdown and a crowd full of Swifties went nuts “We all need to calm down.”, and she’s not wrong in the tongue-in-cheek nod to one of Taylor Swift’s most famous songs “You Need To Calm Down”.

Ever since the power-couple began dating NFL games featuring the Kansas City Chiefs have experienced higher viewership ratings, leading many to conclude the only logical conclusion anyone could draw in this day of social media; it must be Taylor Swift fans flocking to catch a glimpse of her in the VIP suite watching her boyfriend play football.

I mean what else could it be, right?!?!

There is some science, or at least analytics to back up the assertion that Taylor Swift is attracting new fans to football, but would that really be so bad?

According to a Nielsen Media Research estimate they found an additional 2 million women watched the Kansas City Chiefs game on October 1, so there’s that.

And Taylor Swift summed up this new found attention by her Swifty Nation when she joked about “pissing off a few dads, Brads and Chads” with all the attention she’s been getting at football games.

To hear the haters spin it they think NFL broadcasters are showing and talking about Taylor Swift non-stop, but the reality is the data shows that Taylor Swift is “typically on screen for less than 25 seconds over the course of broadcasts that run longer than three hours, and her name is rarely mentioned.” according to analysis of the broadcasts.

So there you have all you Brads and Chads out there thinking the NFL is going soft with their shots of a woman in the stands celebrating her boyfriend’s accomplishments.

Now can we all just calm down?

How Often Is Taylor Swift Actually Shown at N.F.L. Games?

Space

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has flown its last mission over Mars.

It feels like it was only last week that we wrote about Ingenuity having issues….well….because it was. In our January 22, 2024 issue we wrote about how NASA had briefly lost contact with its Ingenuity Mars helicopter, only to reestablish contact with it after instructing the Perseverance rover "to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal."

Now about a week later there’s news that one of Ingenuity’s rotor blades was damaged during a hard landing, and the helicopter will never fly again.

#sadface

In all seriousness, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter was an insanely creative and daring piece of tech, and its mission was audacious; which isn’t something we get to say about NASA very much these days.

So my hat’s off to the entire Mars Ingenuity helicopter team over at NASA for doing an amazing job.

You will be missed Ingenuity.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Has Taken Its Final Flight

So much news, so little time. Until tomorrow we’re signing out.

— Chris