Trying to corner a market is not a new idea. A forgotten incident from the 1980s: the Hunts brothers thought they could corner the market on silver. They spent about $6 billion buying up silver futures. That's about $30 billion in today's money. They briefly controlled the majority of all the silver coming out of silver mines, and thought they could dictate terms to industries that needed silver (such as the photography industry, which needed silver for film development). The price of silver skyrocketed. However, over the last century, silver has become fairly democratic. Most families have some items of silver lying around. When the silver price peaked, millions of families began rummaging around their homes, finding what silver they could, and then selling it. The price of silver crashed, and the Hunts brothers were forced to declare bankruptcy.

Cornering a market works if the supply of something is really limited and new supplies can not be quickly created. Maybe WeWork thought it could do this with office rentals? If so, it seems it lost the bet.