The Hot Corporate "Arb": Sell Your $1 of Crypto on Stock Market for $2

Sell Your Crypto on the Stock Exchange

… As I often comment around here, the US public stock market will pay $2 or more for $1 worth of crypto. Every crypto entrepreneur has noticed this. If you have a big pot of Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana or Dogecoin or Trumpcoin or anything else, you should wrap it in a US public company and sell it to stock investors for twice its actual value. But to wrap it in a public company, you need a public company. There are only so many of those, and they are busy…. […]

And: Right? Everyone should do this arb? This is not investment advice but honestly what am I doing with my life. Right now, if you have a few hundred million dollars lying around, you can buy any crypto you like with it, and the US stock market will give you an immediate 500+% paper profit. All you need — besides the startup cash — is a little public company to put your crypto in.

French Crypto Chiefs Step Up Security After Violent Kidnappings

A man, beaten and doused in gasoline, was found in the trunk of a car. A couple were abducted before dawn from their countryside house and sped to separate locations. A woman was attacked in broad daylight on a Paris street by men trying to drag her into a van.

Over the past six months in France, these violent, headline-grabbing kidnappings or attempted kidnappings, followed by demands for hefty ransoms, had one common thread: All targeted people with ties to the cryptocurrency world — in most cases, family members of crypto entrepreneurs or influencers.

While the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies has enticed criminals around the globe — including in the United States — the spree of recent attacks in France has shocked many by their brazenness, brutality and copycat nature. In two instances, the kidnappers cut off a victim’s finger to scare families and colleagues into paying millions of euros in ransom, the authorities said — and in one of those cases, they threatened to drill into the victim’s knee, according to France’s interior minister.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins Signals Regulatory Shift

Emphasis on Traditional Enforcement. Chair Atkins has outlined several perspectives on SEC enforcement. First, he has called for the SEC’s enforcement priorities to return to the SEC’s core mission of investor protection, with a focus on traditional fraud, holding accountable “those who lie, cheat, and steal.” This suggests cases involving, for example, offering frauds, public company accounting and disclosure, insider trading, and market manipulation. It also suggests, possibly, fewer enforcement actions for technical violations such as books-and-records infractions.

Second, he envisions an enforcement focus on clear-cut violations, while avoiding cases built on novel or aggressive legal theories. Thus, the SEC will move away from what he characterized as “ad hoc” enforcement. “The Commission’s enforcement approach will return to Congress’ original intent, which is to police violations of these established obligations, particularly as they relate to fraud and manipulation.”

Third, Chair Atkins announced plans for reforming the SEC’s administrative proceeding process. He asked Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw to take on the “SEC’s administrative law proceedings framework and procedures in adjudications” in light of the two Supreme Court rulings (SEC v. Jarksy and Loper Bright Industries) that he believes “oblige” the Commission to “rethink and reform this area.”

Stocks Rally on the ‘TACO Trade’ After Trump’s Latest Tariff Delay

The index rose more than 2 percent, which analysts attributed to President Trump’s delaying a proposed 50 percent tariff on the European Union that he had threatened only a few days earlier.

They also talked about tacos.

Or rather, the “TACO” trade, which is short for Trump Always Chickens Out. The tongue-in-cheek term, coined by a Financial Times columnist, has been adopted by some to describe the pattern in which markets tumble after Mr. Trump makes tariff threats, only to rebound just as sharply when he relents and gives countries more time to negotiate deals.

Steak n’ Shake COO Says Bitcoin Payments Cut Processing Fees in Half

Speaking at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Edwards said that bitcoin payments have been faster and cheaper than traditional credit card payments.

“When customers choose to pay in bitcoin instead of credit cards, we are saving about 50% in our processing fees,” Edwards said. “This means that bitcoin is a win for the customer, it’s a win for us as a merchant, and it’s a win for the bitcoin community.”

Edwards said that on May 16, the day Steak n’ Shake began accepting bitcoin payments, one in every 500 bitcoin transactions globally happened at Steak n’ Shake.