The Best One Yet
☘️ “Split The G” — Guinness’ viral surge. North Korea’s Bitcoin heist. Hollywood’s conserva-pivot.
Thu, 13 Mar 2025
266-year-old Guinness just hit all-time-high sales… because of one viral drink-tivity.A secret North Korean hacker team just stole $1.5B of crypto… it’s the biggest heist of all time.Hollywood is pivoting to serve red meat TV to red states… we call it “RonSwonsification.”Plus, a big thing you can do for this show (and it just takes 5 seconds)…Follow the showTurn on auto-downloadsHOW TO TURN ON AUTO DOWNLOADS:Apple Podcasts: Go to our show page → Tap Follow (top right) → Tap the down arrow → Select Auto-DownloadSpotify: Go to our show page → Tap the gear icon → Click Auto-DownloadAmazon Music: Follow & enable auto-downloads$DEO $BTC $WBDWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Costco’s Kirkland 🌭. Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.“The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Susper Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Why are Guinness sales at an all-time high?
So it's not just Patrick McFinnegan and Mickey O'Sullivan splitting the Gs with the lads over there. Although there's going to be a lot of McFinnigans and O'Sullivans this weekend doing just that. Kim Kardashian, Olivia Rodrigo, the Princess of Wales. All of them have been spotted recently splitting the G with the ladies. It's Ginsanity. It is. After 266 years, Guinness, which has never changed.
Never. Is enjoying all-time highs. So Jack, what's the lucky takeaway for our buddies over at Guinness? One's company, two is a crowd, and three is a profit party. Yetis, there's actually a long history of viral drinktivities, including before social media. Jager bombs and Smirnoff icing. Classics. Both of those drinking activities catapulted the brands and boomed sales.
But the underlying theme shared by all these drinktivities is actually that they created a group act. You're not splitting the G on your own in your apartment. No. And you're not smearing off icing yourself. Hopefully not. And this is a reminder how groups who share a product or an experience amplify its impact. If your product simply becomes popular, that's good.
But if the product becomes popular, especially with groups, that's great. Besties, sometimes a brand can create that. Sometimes it just happens organically. But either way, one's a company, two's a crowd, and three's a profit party. For our second story, we just saw the biggest money heist in history, and this was a Bitcoin heist.
This story shines light on North Korea's one successful industry, professional cybercrime. Yetis, Jack and I have been looking at the numbers and also our portfolios. And like all other risky investments, Bitcoin has lost its Trump bump. The price of Bitcoin is down to $83,000 as of this recording, which is down 25% from its all-time high. Yeah, it's now in a Trump slump.
Ben, the Bitcoin, he got pretty bruised this week. And one reason for Bitcoin's decline in particular is the biggest theft of all time. $1.5 billion of crypto was stolen last month. We're talking about the world's number two largest crypto exchange, Bybit, which was, what were they doing exactly when the whole theft went down, Jack?
Bybit, which is huge in the rest of the world, but actually isn't active in the United States, they were just moving money from one of their accounts to another account. Okay, but then the hackers did something pretty sneaky. They secretly changed the address that the money was being sent to. Yeah.
Minutes later, the CFO called the CEO, said they'd been hacked, and that that $1.5 billion he just wired is gone. Jack, I believe Butch Cassidy called this the old switcheroo. Yes, that's exactly what it was. And the result was the biggest theft in the history of money. We repeat, there's never been a bank robbery or the theft of goods as big as this. $1.5 billion was stolen.
You know, you're thinking Batman, The Dark Knight. Nope. The Joker didn't even steal this much fictional money in that movie. Exactly. Now, Bybit did manage to borrow money from banks and from peer companies to remain solvent. So they have survived this blow. And this company has put a bounty out on the thieves who stole their crypto like they were Bonnie and Clyde. But good luck finding them.
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