On this day, 13 years ago, the world broke out in a panic when Lehman Brothers filed for Ch. 11 bankruptcy. Still the largest bankruptcy filing in US history, it was the climax of the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
Subprime mortgages were to blame, lending money to people that were far from solvent. You had young adults buying $100,000+ homes across middle-class America, each with a brand new car and everything else they could want. Pools, vacations, living way outside their means.
It was a great boom.
Until it went bust.
And much of the world felt it. Thus came negative interest rates in the years to follow, economies grappling to recover. This was the last straw for our founders.
Having dedicated their lives to the world of finance, Alti Wine Exchange said ok it’s time to reinvent. We want assets, we want to combine what we love with a type of trading that makes sense, based on finite resources, limited bottles of the world’s best wines.
Will it make you filthy rich? You can definitely earn a return, but this is a type of business built on passion. Worst case scenario, you get a rare bottle of wine to drink that you paid much less than the market price for, a bottle that is perfectly preserved in Bordeaux until you say GO!
In the infamously simple words of Hemingway:
“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.”
And please, don’t let a bump in history like September 15, 2008 stop you. A date throughout any year is bound for ups and downs.
Do not forget that on a day like today in 1616, the first free public school in Europe opened to residents in Frascati, Italy. In 1835, Darwin arrived at the Galapagos. In 1928, Fleming discovered penicillin. Game changers to life as we know it!
Just as 2008 was a year of hardship, it incited great minds to reinvent. We turned to new ideas, new ways of investing.
Alti Wine Exchange is the first of its kind, a blockchain-based platform that provides an alternative asset investment: rare wines. The good life.
Want to know more? Just ask!