They incur significantly less disclosure from the actual business that's going public than an IPO does (because the SPAC files these instead, before they've chosen a target). So, a business that thinks it's too weak and/or early to IPO can merge with a SPAC instead.

Negative net benefits as they fulfil 2 purposes:

1) Ridiculously large, risk-unadjusted payoff for the promoter 2) Regulatory circumvention

Mix in some hype and voila - you get the same level of energy as a crypto-venture in traditional finance.

Their main benefit is price certainty, so they attract volatile offerings. Theoretically they're attractive for companies whose price depends a lot on external factors; you could imagine that being e.g. a company that uses a lot of expensive raw materials or something, but in practice it's mostly companies in hype-driven industries or those whose success is completely dependent on one or a small number of other companies (e.g. a company making iphone accessories is completely dependent on how well the iphone is doing), and those don't tend to be the strongest or most solid companies.

Inherent is a bit loaded of a term. Going public via a SPAC isn’t inherently bad. But it allows companies to go public without normal disclosures allowing investors the ability to do “normal” diligence.

That seems, inherently, to be a loophole that can be easily exploited (See Nikola). So, there’s that.

The reason we are talking about them is because of the macro conditions that pushed risk taking out to an absurd extreme. That is probably bad.

The structure itself though is neutral of course.