MAGA Billionaires Can't Get Enough Testosterone
Testosterone is shown during a discussion round of the National Anti Doping Agency Germany in 2016.
Photographer: Maja Hitij/picture alliance via Getty Images
Encouraging people to use performance-enhancing drugs to break world records — the core idea behind the Enhanced Games, aka the “Steroid Olympics” — already gave me pause. Now its billionaire backers say they’ll offer testosterone to ordinary folks, not just athletes, as part of their plan to take their events-slash-telemedicine company public via a special-purpose acquisition company. That makes me even warier.
The $1.2 billion enterprise value ascribed to Enhanced Ltd. by A Paradise Acquisition Corp. seems pretty pumped up for a risky concept that’s generated minimal revenue. SPACs themselves are a financial tool with notoriously misaligned financial incentives, inflated projections and a track record of impoverishing retail investors. So perhaps it’s just as well the listing probably won’t raise much cash.