Ever wish you could don a Patagonia vest, unleash a lengthy thread on X, and transform into a venture capitalist yourself?

A growing number of financial platforms are giving retail investors the opportunity to break into the coveted world of private markets, where traders take on heightened risk for a chance at a far greater reward.

Just look at SoFi, which today said it was adding private market funds that give clients access to high-flying companies that don’t trade publicly, like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Epic Games. Until now, SoFi offered private market access to investors who could throw down at least $25,000. Now, you need just $10 to invest. SoFi ticked 3.69% higher today.

Back in March, marketplaces like EquityZen and Forge Global lowered their threshold for individual investors to put money into private companies to just $5,000.

But it hasn’t been a smooth road

Last week, Robinhood took a different backdoor route, offering European investors equity “tokens” of OpenAI and SpaceX. But the plan came under fire when a clearly annoyed OpenAI responded in a statement on X that Robinhood’s tokens “are not OpenAI equity” and warned investors to be careful. Shares of Robinhood sank 6% last Thursday morning after OpenAI shot back. European regulators, too, are scrutinizing Robinhood’s tokenization process, with the Bank of Lithuania saying it is “awaiting clarifications” on the structure.

But investment startup Linqto’s situation makes Robinhood’s kerfuffle look like no big deal. Linqto was one of the first companies to let retail investors trade shares of private companies, but today it filed for bankruptcy and is reportedly under investigation by the SEC and DOJ for securities fraud and aggressive marketing to investors who aren’t eligible to buy private shares.

Zoom out: Regular investors are vying for access to private markets for a reason: Once a successful startup goes public, it’s possible that its days of providing investors with exponential returns are over. And with the IPO pipeline stalled over the past few years, there are more private unicorns than ever.

But as Matt Levine notes, the demand for private company shares far outweighs the supply. Most startups restrict early shareholders, including employees or angel investors, from selling their stock before the firm goes public, forming a gate that platforms like Robinhood, SoFi, and others are trying to unlock.—LB

🟢 What’s up

• Tesla rebounded 1.33% from Monday’s $68 billion wipeout. Elon Musk ripped into analysts criticizing his plan to start a new political party, telling Dan Ives to “shut up” about asking the board to establish new guardrails on his political endeavors.
• Lucid, a high-end Tesla rival, popped 8.77% after setting the Guinness World Record for the longest journey by an electric car on a single charge: about 749 miles.
• EssilorLuxottica, the world’s largest eyewear maker and maker of Ray-Ban, jumped 6.06% after Meta reportedly acquired a stake of just under 3% of the company worth about $3.5 billion.
• Sequans Communications soared 44.06% after the French semiconductor company said it raised $384 million to start purchasing—you guessed it—bitcoin.
• BTCS Inc., a crypto company, jumped 111.07% after the company announced it was planning to raise $100 million to purchase ethereum (sensing a theme?).
• GlobalFoundries rose 6.96% after the chipmaker agreed to buy AI supplier MIPS.

What’s down

• Clean energy stocks including SunRun (-11.43%), Enphase Energy (-3.58%), and First Solar (-6.54%) got hit after President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to speed up the elimination of wind and solar subsidies.
• Hershey hired a new CEO, Wendy’s boss Kirk Tanner, who did not receive a warm welcome from investors. Shares melted 3.18%.
• Datadog, the software company that was recently tapped to join the S&P 500 index, slumped 4.25% after being downgraded by Guggenheim Securities.
• Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO) sank 8.91% when the Federal Housing Finance Agency said it would begin accepting rival credit score VantageScore 4.0 for mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, heating up competition for the longtime leader in the space.

Over one-quarter (27%) of all homes sold in the first three months of the year were bought by real estate investors, according to BatchData, which is the highest share in at least five years. From 2020 to 2023, investors bought 18.5% of homes on average.

The details: It’s not that investors are buying a lot more properties than they had been (investor purchases rose just 1.2% from the year earlier), it’s that more traditional buyers are being priced out and staying on the sidelines, resulting in a bigger share for investors with access to financing and deeper pockets. Overall, about 20% of the US’ 86 million single-family homes are owned by investors, per BatchData.

Who are these investors? No, Blackstone isn’t moving into your neighborhood. According to the AP, the vast majority (85%) of all investor-owned residential properties are “mom and pop” shops who own between one and five homes. Investors who own between six and 10 homes account for another 5%, and those big institutional investors with 1,000+ properties in their portfolio have just a 2.2% share.

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Did Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky wear a suit during his recent trip to the NATO summit?

Only $200 million in crypto is on the line.

The crypto-based prediction market Polymarket is being accused of manipulation from outraged users over the seemingly prosaic question of whether Zelensky wore a suit in Europe in late June, raising doubts over its ultimate goal of being an arbiter of truth.

How we got here

The controversy all started on May 22, when a market showed up on the platform with the prompt: “Will Zelensky wear a suit before July?” (Zelensky has famously stuck to military-style clothing while his country defends itself against Russia.)

According to Polymarket, the bet would resolve to “yes” if Zelensky was photographed or videotaped wearing a suit based on the “consensus of credible reporting,” and gamblers spent more than $200 million betting on the outcome.

Well, at the NATO conference in June—before the July deadline—Zelensky was seen in formal attire. But the question of whether it was technically a suit he was wearing sparked ferocious debate online, including from popular menswear poster Derek Guy, who called Zelenky’s outfit “both a suit and not a suit.”

While the market was initially resolved as “yes,” those who bet on “no” objected, escalating the disagreement to a third-party dispute resolution system known as UMA, which labels itself a “decentralized truth machine” that “can record any verifiable truth or data onto a blockchain.”

• Those who hold UMA protocol tokens can weigh in on disputes as supposedly unbiased observers.
• But because Polymarket trading volumes are so much bigger than UMA’s market capitalization, critics say UMA whales could be placing side bets to exploit their role in helping resolve Polymarket disputes—as has been alleged in the Zelensky suit debacle.

Big picture: We’re expecting a final decision from Polymarket on whether the Zelensky suit market will resolve to a “no” or a “yes” later today. As of this morning, “no” is seen as the far likelier outcome. But no matter which result is handed down, this episode has delivered a significant reputational hit to Polymarket, a platform that had been booming, and doubts are rising about its ability to verify “the truth” scale.—NF

• President Trump (in addition to floating copper tariffs) said that 200% tariffs on pharma imports are coming “very soon.”
• Meta poached Apple’s top executive overseeing AI models, adding more headwinds to Tim Cook’s artificial intelligence ambitions, per Bloomberg. At least F1 crushed at the box office.
• Waymo cars are coming to New York and Philadelphia on “road trips,” perhaps a sign the company intends to launch a commercial robotaxi service in those cities down the line.
• TSA will no longer make you take off your shoes when going through security at certain airports, and more could be on the way.
• The IRS said in a filing that churches can now endorse political candidates and still keep their tax-exempt status.

A quiet week of data continues on Wednesday with wholesale inventories and the minutes from the most recent FOMC meeting.

• Wholesale inventories is a measure of how many unsold goods wholesalers are holding onto, which will give us some insight into the state of the US economy.
• As for the FOMC minutes, while that meeting has already passed, the devil is in the details, and it will be useful to learn just how united the Fed bankers are about keeping rates steady for now, or if there’s any disparity in their opinions.

​​ Debating the bill: Explore a wide array of opinions on Trump’s massive tax and spending bill.

Long read: The paradox of India.

Longer reads: The bestselling books on Bookshop so far this year.

Visualization: Check out the top-ranked countries for work-life balance.

Once you’ve sent your last email for the day: Shop the 99 best deals of Amazon Prime Day.