Axios

All the suits were at Coinbase x FT's State of Crypto Summit in New York yesterday.

• Issuers behind the spot bitcoin ETFs including BlackRock, as well as bank executives, venture capitalists, analysts, startup founders and the reporters who cover them, were in attendance.

Zoom in: ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood, whose firm invests in tech companies like crypto exchange Coinbase, chatted with Brian Armstrong 👆 in a breezy, yet snooze-y conversation about the promise of crypto.

• One piece of news: Armstrong said he's spoken with a dozen senators in the last few days, with various pieces of crypto legislation being drafted on the Hill.

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday said the state recovered $50 million in a settlement agreement with crypto exchange Gemini that will be returned to Gemini Earn customers involved in a multi-firm bankruptcy proceeding.

The intrigue: As part of the agreement, Gemini has agreed to cooperate in the $3 billion fraud case against its former partner Genesis, the now defunct lender's former chief Soichiro "Michael" Moro, as well as Genesis parent Digital Currency Group and founder and chief Barry Silbert.

There's a new risk to the global economy, and it's coming from the heart of Europe.

The big picture: Investors are shedding French stocks and bonds as they see a chance the country's voters will make a decisive turn to far-right populism. This would likely mean wider fiscal deficits and new strains on European unity.

New-car prices starting with the number "2" are making a comeback.

By the numbers: Inventory of new vehicles on sale for less than $30,000 is up 88% over the last year, Cars.com reported today.

• Inventory of vehicles in the $30,000–$49,999 range is up 41.3%.

Context: Affordable new vehicles evaporated during the pandemic, when prices skyrocketed amid widespread vehicle shortages.

Reality check: New vehicles priced at less than $30,000 still represent only 14% of vehicle inventory, though that's up from 11% a year ago. And the under-$20K vehicle is gone.

The bottom line: Automakers are finally churning out some lower-cost vehicles now that production capacity has caught up to demand.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of Starbucks in a labor battle involving the firing of seven workers who tried unionizing one of the coffee giant's Memphis stores.

Why it matters: The decision overturns a National Labor Relations Board order to reinstate the fired workers and will make it harder for the administrative body to stop companies from violating labor laws.

The chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, confirmed today that spot ether ETFs should be approved this summer.

Why it matters: A regulated, exchange traded product would allow institutional investors to take positions in the ether cryptocurrency, the coin of the Ethereum blockchain, just as they have in bitcoin since January.

Donald Trump met with leading bitcoin mining executives at the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence Tuesday, engaging with them on related policy issues.

Why it matters: It's the latest development in the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's newfound embrace of the cryptocurrency industry, as he continues to force it into the 2024 election conversation.

Blockchains associated with Terraform Labs are still worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

• Our thought bubble: 🤯

Catch up fast: When terraUSD blew up, Terraform Labs initiated a fork of the blockchain, with the idea being that other apps built on it could live on, even if the stablecoin died.

• A group of diehards kept the original blockchain running, though, stablecoin and all.

By the numbers: Put those two chains together and you get tantalizingly close to a billion dollars in supposed value.

Metamask just made it easy for its users to participate in staking.

Why it matters: Staking provides the yield native to the Ethereum blockchain.

Context: Metamask is far and away the most used cryptocurrency wallet on Ethereum, and maybe the most used software wallet, period.

• The company behind it estimates it has 30 million users.

Staking yield is paid in ether (ETH). So, in theory, a user could earn more ETH but, in real terms, that gain could all be lost quickly if the value of ETH were to take a dive.

• However, though ETH's price increase has been slower than BTC's, it's been trending up over the last year.

The Remilia Corporation, which has been behind some of the weirder projects where art and cryptocurrency make a sort of bizarre lovechild, just announced the Milady Cult Token (CULT).

Why it matters: Remilia's Milady NFTs are a top-10 project, with its floor price trending up over the last six months.

• It's a project with a devoted community, and its holders will soon be rewarded as one of the recipients of this new token drop.
• Half the tokens will be given to people who hold different products the group has released.

Zoom in: Remilia says there have been no private sales of CULT to venture investors behind the scenes.

New trade restrictions on China are a test of whether the U.S. and Europe can pursue strong industrial policy and fight climate change simultaneously.

Why it matters: These huge carbon emitters are looking to speed deployment of renewables and electric vehicles, and China is a huge producer of low-cost equipment.

Do Americans think of inflation as a rise in prices? Or, per my story from last month, has the vernacular meaning of the word changed to just mean high prices? The good folks at Morning Consult surveyed 2,201 Americans to find out.

The big picture: Some 86% of Americans are worried about inflation, and many of them still define inflation as being a rise in prices, rather than just high prices. But they tend to look at that rise over four years, not one.