October 31 in business history: a 5:55 single, a nine-page paper, and a $41 billion bankruptcy
Three documents went public on a 31 October — Queen's uncut 5:55 single in 1975, the nine-page Bitcoin paper in 2008, and MF Global's bankruptcy petition in 2011 — and each one shows what a release commits you to before you know what it is worth.
Three documents went public on a 31 October: a seven-inch record in 1975, a nine-page paper in 2008, and a bankruptcy petition in 2011.
Each one left its maker's hands the moment it was released. None could be revised afterwards.
What the world did with them is the part the makers did not get to write.
The record that would not be cut
"Bohemian Rhapsody" came out in Britain on 31 October 1975 on EMI, as a seven-inch single, at five minutes and 55 seconds. 1
It has no chorus. It is a suite — piano ballad, opera pastiche, hard rock, coda — written by Freddie Mercury. 1
Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield in Monmouthshire and ran three weeks across five studios. 1
Those studios offered 24-track tape. To reach the density the song needed, the vocals were bounced down through eight generations of tape, and some sections carried 180 overdubs. 1
Executives told the band the length made it unmarketable, that it would never be a hit, and that it should be cut. Mercury refused. 1
Radio was the harder objection. Before release, the producer Roy Thomas Baker and the band gave a reel-to-reel copy to the Capital Radio DJ Kenny Everett, on the condition that he not play it. 1
Everett played it 14 times in two days. On the Monday, listeners went to record shops asking for a single that had not been released yet. 1
It then spent nine weeks at number one in Britain, Christmas included. Re-released in 1991 after Mercury's death, it took number one for five more weeks. 1
It is the only single to have been a Christmas number one twice with the same version, the UK's third best-selling single, and past six million copies worldwide. 1
The band could not perform it on television either. Facing a tour and a Top of the Pops booking that clashed, they took one of their own trucks to Elstree Studios and shot a promotional film on 10 November 1975. 1
It took four hours, cost £4,500, and was directed by Bruce Gowers. 1
The video is the part usually credited with changing how records were sold. The thing it sold was still an unedited five-minute-fifty-five recording, and that could not be changed after 31 October.
Decision mirror: In June 2024 Sony Music agreed to buy Queen's catalogue — recordings, publishing and other rights — for £1 billion, about $1.27 billion. A rival bidder was reported to have stopped at $900 million. 2
Live performance was excluded, and stays with Brian May and Roger Taylor. 2
The US and Canadian recorded-music rights had already gone to Disney in the 2000s and remain there in perpetuity. 2
So the asset sold in 2024 rested on a decision taken fifty years earlier, when the band refused to cut it.
The paper with no company behind it
At 2:10 in the afternoon Eastern time on Friday 31 October 2008, a message went to the Cryptography Mailing List under the subject line "Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper". It was signed Satoshi Nakamoto. 3
The message was a link to a nine-page PDF and a summary of four claims. Double-spending is prevented by a peer-to-peer network. There is no mint or other trusted party. Participants can be anonymous. New coins come from Hashcash-style proof-of-work. 3
The abstract made the argument in one sentence: payments sent directly from one party to another, "without the burdens of going through a financial institution". 4
There was no company, no funding round, no patent, no product and no price. The software that would run the network did not exist. 5
The network started on 3 January 2009, when Nakamoto mined the first block. The first transaction — ten bitcoins to Hal Finney — came nine days later. 5
The paper was not peer-reviewed. Academics who read it at the time argued it could not work. 5
Everything that later became valuable was already in that post. What was missing was every institution that normally makes a thing valuable: a seller, a market, a custodian, a regulator.
Decision mirror: On 10 January 2024 the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products, after refusing more than twenty such filings since 2018 and losing a court case over how it explained one refusal. 6
The largest, BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust, held $62.3 billion of net assets on 30 October 2026 and charges 0.25 per cent a year. 7
Since inception its total return is about 90 per cent. Over the past twelve months the same fund is down 26.8 per cent. 7
Bitcoin itself trades near $76,500. 7
The paper's whole claim was that you would not need a trusted third party. The institution arrived anyway, wrapped around the asset, charging a quarter of a point.
The petition filed at the end of the argument
MF Global Holdings filed for Chapter 11 in Manhattan on Monday 31 October 2011, listing $41 billion of assets. BankruptcyData.com ranked it the eighth-largest filing in US history at the time. 8
The cause was a $6.3 billion own-account position in the debt of Italy, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and Portugal, financed with borrowed money. 8
The week before had run in one direction: a quarterly loss of $186.6 million on 25 October, a cut to junk by the rating agencies, and a sale to Interactive Brokers that collapsed over the weekend. 8
On the Monday itself, the CME barred it from trading and the New York Fed suspended it as a primary dealer. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation moved to liquidate the brokerage. 8
Jon Corzine had taken over in March 2010. He resigned four days later. 9
The bond position was not the charge that mattered. The regulator found that in the last week of October 2011 MF Global had used customer segregated funds to support its own operations and those of its affiliates. 10
The shortfall in customer accounts was $1.6 billion. 11
Customers were paid back in full. The estate closed in February 2016 after an $8.1 billion distribution: 100 per cent for former customers and secured creditors, 95 per cent for unsecured creditors. 11
The firm admitted the use of customer money and was ordered to pay $1.212 billion in restitution, with a $100 million penalty to follow once customers and priority creditors were paid in full. Litigation continued against Corzine and the assistant treasurer, Edith O'Brien. 10
A petition settles the argument about a company. It does not settle the argument about the customers. That one took four more years.
Decision mirror: FTX, the crypto exchange that failed in November 2022, made its fifth distribution on 31 July 2026: about $900 million, taking allowed customer claims in its two largest classes to 105 per cent of value and its smaller convenience class to 120 per cent. 12
Those percentages are measured against claim values fixed at November 2022, so a figure above 100 per cent does not mean the money was never gone. 12
MF Global needed four years and an $8.1 billion distribution to reach 100 per cent. FTX reached 105 per cent in under four years.
Three questions for the day
- Which version of your product did you ship, and who is still asking you to cut it?
- What have you published that your business model still assumes you control?
- Where does your customer's money sit tonight, and who would find out first if it did not?
References
- 1Bohemian Rhapsody
en.wikipedia.org
- 2
- 3Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper
metzdowd.com
- 4
- 5Bitcoin
en.wikipedia.org
- 6
- 7iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF
ishares.com
- 8
- 9MF Global
en.wikipedia.org
- 10
- 11MF Global Team Marks Final Chapter in $8.1B Recovery Effort
hugheshubbard.com
- 12
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