저자: 미상 · 외국인
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Grant Cardone의 펀드28 설명서를 근거로, 그가 투자자 자금을 최대 80%까지 차입해 자산 전반에 투자할 수 있고 특수관계 거래도 허용되는 구조임을 지적. 1% 매입·매각·금융주선 수수료 등 다양한 수수료가 이연되면서 투자자 부담이 복리로 쌓이는 구조라고 주장. 마진콜 여부는 확인 불가라고 명시하며, 사업가와 펀드 구조에 대한 우려 제기가 주된 내용.
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could pop potentially do 35% a year and be a very safe investment. of Bitcoin plummeted. rate of Bitcoin is zero. What what Why is it zero? Because there's 21 million. That's all there's ever going to be. Okay. So, There's 21 million. Yeah. Right? The rate at which we create more Bitcoin is asymptotically following to zero.
It's falling to zero. Asymptot- What what is that word? You know, asymptotically. Asym- Well, holy smokes. After that crypto wipeout and reports that Grant Cardone has listed his jet for sale on controller.com and a $30 million mansion in a Florida. A lot of people are wondering, is Cardone actually buying the dip on crypto or is he secretly getting margin called?
How could a self-proclaimed billionaire be potentially getting margin called? Well, what if I told you I have discovered incentives that actually enable Grant Cardone to make money off of getting margin called using investor money potentially in those margin calls or to lend to his own entities to finance his lifestyle.
Now, I want to be clear. Some of the conclusions we make in this video are my opinion, so I'm going to show you where I get this data from so that way you can make your own opinion on this because after all, I don't want to get sued again by Cardone. He lost the first time. Maybe he wants a round two.
Anyway, sorry. I had to do the maniacal laughter. Uh but Cardone, you know, this has been getting a lot of press that Cardone is now selling his jet and his home for crypto to go by the crypto dip. So, a lot of people are like, "Dude, the guy's definitely getting margin called. He's so heavily leveraged." Well, let's understand first the incentives that he has built into his actual documents.
So, what is inside of some of his fund documents that could give us some guidance. Well, first, if you look at Cardone fund number 28, his most recent fund, you can see Cardone can leverage up to 80% of the fund. Now, that's interesting. So, he can take out 80% of the fund. Now, who has the power to borrow?
Only Cardone. He can borrow, and there's really no limitation of what he can do with that money. In fact, the actual documents tell us that he can invest in any of the following: real property, mortgages or loans, notes, contracts, receivables, crypto, or pretty much any other asset. So, Grant Cardone can take investor capital, borrow against it, and pretty much invest in anything.
Now, that's really important because when I say you can invest in notes, it basically means you could take a real estate and crypto fund, and you could argue, "Hey, um this fund, or a combination of funds, are going to borrow my or lend to my other entity, Cardone Training Technologies, for example, who happens to own his jet.
They're going to lend to this other entity over here $70 million. I'm now going to generate fees for making that loan. You'll see fees in just a moment. And now, all of a sudden, Cardone is his own bank. He can use all of his different funds to be his own bank and earn fees by doing it." Because, see, the creative thing that Cardone has pulled off is any single time there is a financing transaction, or even a Bitcoin capital transaction, which could include refinancing a line of credit, or even taking an advance on a line of credit to go buy Bitcoin, or theoretically paying off the line of credit, and then re-borrowing on it, Cardone gets to make a fee.
It's called a financing coordination fee, where basically anytime a loan is generated or a draw is made on a line of credit, Cardone gets a fee. So, if Cardone borrows $100 million against $150 million of Bitcoin, Cardone's going to make a $1 million fee for borrowing it. Now, if Cardone happens to get a margin called, oh, I guess he has to pay off some of the Bitcoin or sell some assets, which assets and funds typically earn Cardone a 1% disposition fee.
And then if he ends up buying back or taking on new loans, he'll earn a 1% acquisition fee and a 1% new loan coordination fee. So, all of a sudden you can see that Cardone actually has this incentive to purposefully buy and sell loan or buy and sell assets and continuously take on new debt, close debt, refinance, take on new debt, because that's how he earns a lot of money.
And you can see in his actual documents that he can essentially claim any kind of asset is fair game to go into his fund. Now, this creates a very interesting incentive. It says, Grant Cardone can do anything he wants with the debt that he borrows against investor capital. He can pull it between different funds.
And nobody can tell him that these have to be arms length transactions or third-party transactions. Why? Well, because it says so right here. Loan terms will be established by the manager, not the result of a arms length or third-party transaction. Basically, as long as we're relatively close, we can do related party transactions all we want.
If that wasn't clear enough for you, you can see right here. The manager is permitted to conduct any transaction and there is no claim that it should be affected by the relationship between the fund and the manager or an affiliate of the manager. So, in other words, any entity that Cardone has of his 28 funds or any of the other entities can freely invest in each other or move debt between different funds in any way that he wants, even if that's to go finance a plane, which would be a note receivable for a different fund.
Because that's how his fund structure is set up, at least based on fund 28. And we've seen some of this in other documents as well, but of course, you verify this. Now, if Cardone and his investors are basically backstopping his lifestyle, well, what happens if Cardone goes bankrupt? Do all the funds close and do you just get your money back?
No, he's already thought about that. Literally, there's a section in here, if Grant Cardone goes bankrupt, he gets to keep operating the funds, you do not automatically get your money back. Oh, and he still gets all of his fees through liquidation. Now, what's fascinating about this is not only does he get all of his fees, not only does he say, "You can't sue me because you've already indemnified me." Not only could he use any of his vortex of 28 different funds that he's created to essentially finance to other funds, he can do that.
It's enabled through these documents. Now, whether he does or not is is questionable, but it can happen. Cardone has an incentive to sell assets and take on new debts over and over and over again because he keeps getting his fees. Now, the key here about fees is if Cardone charged a lot of fees, nobody would want to invest with him because his companies wouldn't actually make a lot of a yield.
They wouldn't make a lot of money. The pod I don't want to use that word. The the you know, plan that Cardone has would be exposed. Wait, man. How are we supposed to earn our four or five or six or seven or eight percent preferred return if you're taking all these fees? You're taking all the money and we're not really earning anything.
People would be pissed because there wouldn't be enough money from the real estate or now the Bitcoin that's lost a lot of money to actually pay these distributions. So, how does Grant Cardone solve that? This is the brilliance of the Cardone documents that pretty much nobody reads. Grant Cardone actually defers or has the opportunity at least to defer all of the income that he is owed from the funds.
And he is also able to defer all of the fees that he collects. Now, that's really interesting. Why would you defer the fees? Well, the reason you would defer the fees is to make it so people keep getting their distribution. But if all of those fees are being deferred, it means basically investor debt is ballooning.
Every deferred fee is basically debt that investors have to pay in the future. So, investors who invested, let's say, 200 grand feel like they're getting 200,000 dollars uh of of principal in Cardone Capital funds or whatever. And then they're getting, let's say, you know, we'll call it out to make math easy, a 5% distribution.
And they're like, "Oh, this is great. I'm getting a 5% distribution. Plus, I've got my original 200,000 dollars of capital in the fund." But that liability of that debt is going to keep growing and growing and growing. It's basically a ticking time bomb. So, let's say, as an example, Cardone had 200,000 dollars of your money for 10 years, and you had 3% real estate appreciation.
He did four refinances and a sale at the end just so he could collect all of his fees. You would end up getting 100,000 dollars of distributions. But at the end, you'd only be left with somewhere around 103,000 dollars of money left getting returned to you. So, all of a sudden, you're like, "What What Wait a minute.
I You know, I I invested 200 grand. Didn't the assets go up in value?" Sure. But now you got to pay me all my fees. And so Cardone is potentially extracting or or like I dare I say leveraging up the equity that you originally invested because of all the fees that grow over time. Now, this is just a rough example, but here's an example of how a normal investment would grow uh if you had an investment without fees.
So, the blue line, we'll use a large uh orange arrow here. The blue line would be 3% appreciation on 200 grand without fees. That would be the blue line right here. Okay? The orange line would be your original $200,000. The green line is you getting your distribution from Cardone, so it makes you feel like you're making money.
But, your actual net asset value, if there's only 3% appreciation, could actually be declining. Now, it's actually possible that Cardone's properties appreciate better than 3%. Great, you know, COVID, everything sort of bubbled up. But, the point is that debt bomb of all of Cardone's fees has to get paid at some point.
And Cardone has an incentive to defer those fees and make it seem like you're earning money even if that debt bomb of the fees is growing. If I were an investor in any Cardone funds, I would want a full accounting as soon as possible of all of the deferred fees that Cardone has on my fund or on my money.
So, I would want to know if I invested 200 grand, "Hey man, do you really have 50 grand of fees that you haven't paid yourself that, you know, if I, you know, get cashed out in the future, I'm going to have to pay plus whatever your 35% waterfall is in the future?" Sure. But, it's worse than that because I'm going to show you how this actually applies to the aircraft financing he could pull off or getting margin called where Grant Cardone could make money.
But, in order to understand that, you have to understand how his fees are varied. He has five types of fees. He has an acquisition fee when he buys Bitcoin or an asset like real estate, he gets a 1% fee. So, if he buys $100 million of Bitcoin with investor money, he makes a he makes $1 million for pressing a button on Coinbase.
He makes a million dollars for that. This is why he's been so into Bitcoin lately, even though I don't think he understands how Bitcoin works. You saw the clip with Saylor. The guy's totally clueless about Bitcoin. He's just hitching his wagon to something that's done really well for Michael Saylor.
He sees how much richer Michael Saylor is than him and he's super jealous. You know, this is like Caesar's Augustus. It's like, "Oh my gosh, somebody's better than me. Well, I need to hitch my wagon to this." Anytime he presses the sell button, he also earns 1%. So, I want you to think about that for a moment from a margin call point of view.
If one of his funds, and I don't know that he's actually getting margin called. I'm not here to say, you know, I know he's getting margin called. But, I want you to know this, if Cardone were to get margin called and he had to sell Bitcoin, he would actually have a really perverse incentive. Look at this.
If Bitcoin crashes and he sold Bitcoin worth $100 million, he would earn a 1% fee, in other words, a million dollars. Then, he would pay off debt that's leveraged, you know, pledged against that Bitcoin. Then, when Bitcoin stabilizes, he goes and buys again. He makes a million-dollar fee on the buy again, assuming he's rebuying with that same $100 million.
And then, if he puts new debt on it at, let's say, $65 million, he would now take a 1% fee on that new debt. So, it literally in a crash scenario or margin call scenario where investors are getting hosed and he has to sell and rebuy and take on new debt, Grant Cardone gets 2.65% in fees in that example.
So, investors lose money, Grant Cardone gets paid three times. But, it's worse because Grant Cardone keeps talking about how great it is that you can tax loss harvest as well on Bitcoin, how you could sell and then rebuy and recognize those losses. There's no wash-sale rule yet on Bitcoin, and that gives you the tax benefit in the funds.
But, think about his perverse incentive structure. If he does a sell and a rebuy within 10 minutes, or call it 15 minutes, to do, you know, a tax-loss harvest, every time he does that, he could generate, at least in this case if he's doing it with a $100 million, $2 million a piece. So, he has literally the incentive to sit there with a $100 million in a Coinbase account and go, "Oh, it's down 5%.
Let's tax-loss harvest again. Sell, buy. Ha, sweet, I just made $2 million in 15 minutes or less." Probably like 15 seconds or less. It's probably how long the guy lasts as well. Oh, sorry, we're not supposed to talk about stuff like that. Anyway, that's the tax-loss harvesting example. So, you know, it's the the incentive structure is what the concern here is.
We're not saying Grant Cardone's a fraud. We're not saying Grant Cardone's a Ponzi. We're saying the way that he has set up his fund is really disadvantageous to investors, because in my opinion, not only do you get this perverse incentive to buy and sell, cuz it doesn't really matter what you're buying or what you're selling, you get your fee, but you also have this perverse incentive to have a finance coordination fee.
So, for example, if fund 6, 7, and 8 are all of a sudden lending $50 million to seed fund fund 28, Cardone can tell all his investors, "Wow, I already raised $50 million for fund 28." He doesn't have to tell you that's a capital contribution from debt being made from the other three entities. And that $50 million that he borrowed from the other entities, he gets a 1% fee on.
Cuz remember, he gets $500,000. He gets that 1% financing coordination fee for notes payable or receivable, right? This this financing coordination fee that he earns. On top of that, on all of the capital contributions, so the money that's contributed to these funds, he gets a 1% management fee. But it's really unclear, and of course that's paid regardless of performance.
He could lose as much money as as, you know, the market bears and and he still gets his fee. But what's really interesting is it's not really clearly defined what a capital contribution is. If he borrowed $50 million from funds 6, 7, and 8 and charges a 1% finance coordination fee over there, and then puts that money into fund 28, technically that's capital contributed to fund 28, and he gets another 1% fee.
So he could literally compound fees upon fees upon fees, and nobody notices it cuz he just defers all the fees. I mean, I'm not guaranteeing that he does defer all the fees. Like what he probably does is he just sort of chooses like, "Ha, all right, honey. How much money do we want to make this year?
All right, all right. Let's cash out some of those deferrals." Cashes out just enough, you know, whatever he wants to pay taxes on or doesn't want to pay taxes on. He has the ultimate control over his income. And the investors are paying that. And he could use that income that fee income to pay for loans on things like planes or houses.
And see, that's where it gets really interesting. I don't know this, but if Cardone is his own bank on, let's say, a plane, and the plane with 20% down, which theoretically could come from a different fund as well, would normally on the market have an interest rate of 6 and 1/2% with annual interest of $3.8 million, right?
Great. Fund 6, 7, and 8 could theoretically give a loan to Cardone Training Technologies, and Cardone pays the interest to those funds, so he was his own banker. He made money setting up that $59 million loan, so he's going to get $590,000 for setting up that loan. And then his fees for buying and selling Bitcoin or the other fee deferrals he has just pays his annual interest.
I think there's a real perverse incentive structure to set up this insane web of debt between all of these different infrastructure like companies. And there could be so much debt on debt on these companies. We have no idea how this is going to play out absent like some kind of forensic accounting breakdown.
That isn't even to consider some of the other ways that he could make money. We don't know, but we've seen it before on some deals where we're like, "This is a little suspicious." I think there's a possibility, and other people have argued it as well, that when he actually goes and finds a deal, he contracts it for let's say $220 million, but he sells it to his fund for like $15 million more, so he can go pocket the $15 million difference.
We don't know if that's happening, but that's another speculation that people have. And his fee structure and his fund structure enables all of this because it's all branded with indemnities, don't sue me, bro. I can do whatever I want with this debt. It's also worth remembering most of his funds aren't actually audited because when you look at, well, regulation D funds for accredited investors, they don't actually require audits.
So, you have really three levels of fundraising companies. You have funds that do not require audits. Then you have regulation A funds, which are for non-accredited investors. They require an audit, but an audit could be as basic as the audit that Tricolor got, and the auditors totally missed all of the fraud and the cover-ups that were going on.
That doesn't look good for the Tricolor auditor that just collapsed in September. And then of course you could have a PCAOB audited fund. Now, a lot of people will say, "Oh, well, our auditor is PCAOB registered." Cool, but did they hold your company to PCAOB auditing standards? As far as I can tell, the vast majority of uh Grant Cardone's funds, probably somewhere around 22 of them, plus or minus, aren't required to have audits at all.
So, nobody knows what's in the books, other than Cardone. For the Regulation A funds, those are required to have audits, but not the most stringent level of audits. That is literally how the law is established. So, again, I'm not saying Cardone's violating the law, I'm just saying all of this is going on, and you're relying on an auditor.
Oops. This is, by the way, all from his fund prospectus, fund number 28. So, it's in his very own documents. But, think about the incentives again. You can borrow against any fund asset for pretty much anything. There's no prohibition against lending to affiliated entities or investing in affiliated entities.
He can borrow up to 80% debt, which, yeah, absolutely creates the risk of potentially getting margin called. This is his fee page right here, so you can see it. 1% of the management fee, 1% uh acquisition disposition fee, 1% finance coordination fee, plus reimbursements for construction, construction management, other service fees that are deemed reasonable.
He can pretty much reimburse himself for anything under the sun. And I don't actually think the guy ever actually does construction, so I don't think we'll see a lot of that. Mostly because he tends to buy pretty new buildings, slaps the 10X logo on it, and then says it's worth more money because he slapped his logo on it, and he's changed the branding of it.
That's been my opinion, again, don't sue me, bro. All of this could be wrong, right? But, consider the the loop here, the tools. Every time you buy a property, you also are incentivized to refinance. Anytime there's a refinance, you get a brand new finance coordination fee. So, even though it might not make sense to refinance yet, Cardone gets paid a finance coordination fee of 1% every time he does a refinance.
So, whether it's tax loss harvesting, getting margin called, related party financing, he gets money in all of these scenarios. Margin call, he makes fees. Tax loss harvesting, he makes fees. Related party lending, if he does it, he gets fees. Uh sell property to redeploy to a new fund, he gets fees.
If he rolls up all these properties and IPOs this in the future, technically you would be disposing of all of the assets in all of the different 28 funds, rolling them up into a new asset, and theoretically, he could probably argue that he gets a 1% fee on selling everything and then a 1% fee on the acquisition of of the roll up fund.
Of course, he brands this as now we're doing Bitcoin and real estate, which was probably really poorly timed for him because, you know, there are reports that he's invested about $150 million in Bitcoin, and everybody knows the fastest way to get to $100 million in Bitcoin is to start with $150 million like Grant Cardone.
Now, of course, that's coming from third-party or internet reporting, so, you know, who knows the validity of that, but think about this for a moment. If you're Cardone, you don't want to close a single fund. The guy has had 28 funds as far as I can tell with public research. He's had 28 funds, and he's never closed a single fund.
Why would you not close a fund? See, normally when a fund has finished its objective, you hand people their money back. You hand people their money back, and you go, "Here's your money, here are your gains. Great, we're done." Now, you get a full accounting. Okay, what did I make on my money? What was my total return on investment?
Uh what did I get in terms of uh you know, fees that Cardone got paid? Like, what did I get net of his fees? We have never seen that because Cardone hasn't closed the fund. I think that's intentional. He hasn't intentionally closed a fund because he realizes as soon as he closes the first fund, all of those deferred payables that investors need to pay him are all of a sudden going to get realized by people and people are going to go, "What?
That's how much you're charging me?" Again, you go to an example like this, you invest $200,000, all of a sudden you're like, "Wait, your fees were 41 grand or more?" I don't know if this is what the fees would be. You should evaluate that and demand, "What are the accrued fees that I've had being exposed to your fund?" But I mean, if you look at this over a 10-year period on let's say the whole book, right?
Let's say he could feed funds from one fund to the next and he takes an AUM fee on $2.8 billion. Might even be more now. Some people say it's four or five billion. Let's just use $2.8 billion. $1 billion in equity, $1.86 billion in debt. And this is assuming that he's taking the fee on the full 2.8.
Maybe he's not, but it depends on how much fund-to-fund lending he's doing. He gets an annual management fee of $28 million. Over five years, that's $142 million. Over 10 years, that's $280 million in fees. So, in this scenario on $1 billion of equity, he could make 28% in management fees alone. You know, people hear 1% and they're like, "Oh, that's not a big deal." Haha.
Try that over 10 years. 1% acquisition fee, 1% disposition fee, 1% financing fee. And all of a sudden, when you go to the next page here, you hold for 10 years, you can actually see the fees could be 36.1% of that original investor equity. Now, that doesn't include a 35% waterfall after the preferred return, which could then generate more fees for him depending on how much return there is left after all of the fees that he's deferred.
So, also, Grant Cardone makes it clear that he doesn't have to actually distribute gains from Bitcoin or real estate. He could just keep reinvesting it. That's how he keeps everything going. You keep everything in the vortex and you keep making your fees. You win forever. And so lately what I've seen him do is he's gone from offering like 4 or 5% on his funds to saying, "Oh, you get a non-compounded preferred return of 8%." Okay.
But that return of 8%, how much of that is principal that he's giving back to people? If he's paying out 8% on an asset that's lost 30% in value, in my opinion, he's basically only paying back principal. So he's just giving people their money back that they invested into the fund. And he still gets his fees.
And that's the big hole, that deferral that people forget about. So why do people fall for this stuff? Well, I think there are seven reasons people fall for this. Number one, I don't think people actually understand how big these fees are or what Grant Cardone actually has the opportunity to do with the fees, and they don't read the 200-page, you know, private placement memorandums.
[clears throat] I also think that when they get their monthly payment, they get a little bit of a dopamine hit that everything must be okay because I'm getting my monthly payment. They just don't realize that the value of their principal could actually be substantially decaying. Like I'm a big fan of of no fees.
And I I want to make this clear like I'm not here to pitch any of my products or my company or anything. This is not about me. This is just about sharing information with you. So if you like this, consider subscribing to the channel. So, it looks strong, you know, the funds look strong because the fees are deferred.
And you'll never find an investor in Cardone's funds that are like, "Oh, yeah, you know, I'm really pissed cuz I haven't got my distribution because he makes the distribution." But then ask these people, "Well, how much is your principal actually worth? Do you know what the deferred fees are?" And they're going to go, "No, deferred fees?
What do you mean?" People won't know. People who invest in his funds will be like, "Oh, man, I didn't know he could do that. Damn." And if the funds never actually leave his system, [clears throat] then he keeps compounding fees. And so then of course, you know, eventually when there's an exit, there's going to be this massive fee bomb, and the level that your actual original investment gets diluted, I think it's going to be pretty substantial.
I don't know that with certainty, but we'll see. So short term it looks like people are winning with Cardone, but in my opinion, Grant Cardone is a parasite that is literally living a luxurious lifestyle off of compounding disclosed fees on top of disclosed fees. Like the reason I could put this together and and speculate about what he's doing is because he does disclose these things.
So I'm not here to call him a fraud because he's bluntly told you all of this in his disclosures in the fine print. So this is where even like the SEC comes in and goes, well, it's disclosed. But did most people actually know that? But it doesn't really matter because at this point Cardone has built so much of a business that I think his exit strategy is going to be to roll everything up into some kind of up REIT and and then try to IPO it.
Now IPO sounds great, but I think this is not a technology or software IPO. I think this is where all of a sudden people go, oh cool, I have 200k in a in a Grant Cardone fund, he's going to IPO, that sounds great. But before you actually get your shares, Cardone's going to go, but give me all my fees first.
And what you're left with before it ever even goes public, I think will be vastly different than what people have expected. Now I have no way of knowing that with certainty, obviously, but I'm just fully aware that Cardone selling his plane to buy the Bitcoin dip or his home is probably him just either trying to farm fees if he's ended up financing through these funds, which I believe he has, but I have no no way of verifying that.
We're only using information from this video. There's nothing like secret that I know outside of this. I've provided you all the evidence for why I'm making these opinions. You can make your own. Now, do I think he's actually getting margin called? I think he could be nervous that if he did borrow against Bitcoin, he might get a capital call, and therefore it might make sense to reduce some leverage because Bitcoin is obviously, you know, plummeted quite a bit here.
So, there could be some nervousness around this. I have no way of saying that he's definitely gotten margin called. There could be nervousness around this. I think it's more likely that Cardone benefits from the branding of buying the dip because his IPO kind of depends on buying the dip. Because he's now hitched his credibility to Bitcoin, and so he needs to look like a genius on a rebound.
Hopefully, it does rebound. But, he needs to look like a genius on a rebound. If it doesn't rebound, he's going to have lost a lot of credibility for IPO, and he probably should have never touched Bitcoin. But, then again, I don't think he understands Bitcoin anyway. So, remember, bottom line, this guy is somebody who has figured out how to be both the lender and the borrower.
Potentially, he has that optionality. He has the option to borrow against anything he wants and to pay interest with money that he receives from the fees that he decides to take, and the rest of those are a debt bomb that accrue for the investors. Therefore, in my opinion, his investors, in a disclosed manner, are paying him compounded fees on compounded fees potentially through the different feeder funds, through the web of funds.
Investors don't even realize how much they're paying. And so, if I were an investor, I would want to know. And I would not go near an investment like this with a 10-ft pole. But, that's my opinion. You could have your own. &.
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