Raphael Stevens

A general view of the GameStop logo on one of its stores in the city center of Cologne, Germany.
Ying Tang | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Video game retailer GameStop announced Tuesday its board has unanimously approved a plan to buy bitcoin with its corporate cash, echoing a move made famous by MicroStrategy.
The meme stock jumped more than 6% in extended trading Tuesday following the news. The announcement confirmed CNBC’s reporting in February of GameStop’s intention to add bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to its balance sheet.

The video game retailer said a portion of its cash or future debt and equity issuances may be invested in bitcoin and U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins. As of Feb. 1, GameStop held nearly $4.8 billion in cash. The firm also said it has not set a ceiling on the amount of bitcoin it may purchase.
GameStop will be following in the footsteps of software company MicroStrategy, now known as Strategy, which bought billions of dollars worth of bitcoin in recent years to become the largest corporate holder of the flagship cryptocurrency. That decision prompted a rapid, albeit volatile, rise for Strategy’s stock.
GameStop’s foray into cryptocurrencies marks the latest effort by CEO Ryan Cohen to revive the struggling brick-and-mortar business. Under Cohen’s leadership, GameStop has focused on cutting costs and streamlining operations to ensure the business is profitable.
The company said the move could expose it to volatility associated with cryptocurrency prices.
“Bitcoin, for example, is a highly volatile asset and has experienced significant price fluctuations over time. Our Bitcoin strategy has not been tested and may prove unsuccessful,” GameStop said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has ridden a roller coaster since President Donald Trump won reelection. After shooting up and piercing the $100,000 milestone, bitcoin has declined about 18% from its record high to a recent price of approximately $88,000.
In tandem with the cryptocurrency announcement, investors also cheered a rise in GameStop’s fourth-quarter results. The firm reported net income of $131.3 million, more than double the $63.1 million earned in the same quarter last year.

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AMERICA’S ECONOMY is looking peaky. Inflation expectations are creeping up. On March 25th consumer confidence fell to its lowest in 12 years. But Donald Trump, the country’s president, says relief is at hand. “Liberation day” for the economy will arrive on April 2nd, he proclaims, when he intends to slap hefty new tariffs on imports from all over the world. More

AMERICA’S ECONOMY is looking peaky. Inflation expectations are creeping up. On March 25th consumer confidence fell to its lowest in 12 years. But Donald Trump, the country’s president, says relief is at hand. “Liberation day” for the economy will arrive on April 2nd, he proclaims, when he intends to slap hefty new tariffs on imports from all over the world. More

The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a rule that exempts all U.S. companies and U.S. owners from filing reports about “beneficial ownership information.”
Lawmakers sought such information to help curb criminal activity and illicit finance conducted through opaque shell companies. It came with financial penalties for noncompliance.
The move is part of a broader deregulatory push by the Trump administration.

Kent Nishimura | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

The U.S. Department of Treasury is scrapping a requirement for U.S. small businesses to report information about their owners to the federal government. It’s the latest twist in an on-again-off-again saga for the fledgling rule.
The Corporate Transparency Act, passed in 2021, required millions of businesses to report basic information on their “beneficial owners.” By identifying who owned certain entities, lawmakers sought to curb criminal activity and illicit finance conducted through opaque shell companies.

The rule was set to take effect on March 21, following months of delays in court. It carried financial penalties, potentially thousands of dollars, for noncompliance.
However, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — also known as FinCEN, which is part of the Treasury — issued an interim final rule on March 21 exempting all U.S. citizens and U.S. companies from the reporting requirement.
The rule is open to public comment and set to be finalized later this year.

‘This absolutely waters down the rule’

If it stands, the FinCEN rule would be a significant departure from the purpose of the Corporate Transparency Act and would offer loopholes for criminals to continue laundering money through U.S. entities, according to legal experts.
“This absolutely waters down the rule,” said Erin Bryan, partner and co-chair of the consumer financial services group at Dorsey & Whitney. “Plenty of shell companies are going to be exempt from reporting now,” she added.

Some foreign companies that do business in the U.S. will still be required to file reports, FinCEN said.
FinCEN estimates that this revised reporting requirement will apply to about 20,000 entities in the first year — greatly reduced from the 32.6 million entities, including certain corporations, limited liability companies and others previously estimated to be subject to the reporting requirement in year one.
Most of the Western world already has such requirements in place, Bryan said.
FinCEN declined to comment for this story.

A deregulatory push

The policy change is consistent with President Donald Trump’s deregulatory directive, FinCEN director Andrea Gacki, who assumed her position in 2023, wrote in the interim final rule.
The Trump administration had already suspended enforcement of the requirement earlier this month. Civil penalties could have amounted to as much as $591 a day, in addition to up to $10,000 in criminal fines and up to two years in prison.
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The Treasury “reassessed the balance between the usefulness of collecting [beneficial ownership information] and the regulatory burdens imposed by the scope of the Reporting Rule,” Gacki wrote.
Officials took illicit finance risks, alternative sources of information, the “burdens” of data collection and the public interest into account, she wrote.

Potential loopholes

Reporting requirements remain in effect for certain foreign companies that were formed in another country and are registered to do business in the U.S., Bryan said.
However, if such entities had a U.S.-based beneficial owner, they are no longer obligated to report information on that person, Bryan added,
“In the world of potential shell companies, this is a small subset that we’re dealing with” who still have to provide reports on beneficial owners, she said.

Some observers believe the interim rule would easily allow criminals to skirt detection.
“From this day forward, criminals can evade this national security law by simply starting and running those front companies inside the United States,” Scott Greytak, director of advocacy for Transparency International U.S., a coalition against corruption, said in a statement. More

How much would Capital One’s stock be worth if it completes its blockbuster merger of Discover Financial Services ? The answer, according to one Wall Street firm, is a whole lot more. The news In a Tuesday note, BTIG analysts said they believe shares of Capital One would be worth $427 apiece if the Discover deal is completed — implying eye-popping upside of more than 137% from Monday’s close. The analysts upgraded the stock to a buy rating from hold in the same note. “We see significant earnings power as Capital One fully utilizes Discover’s network to take market share in the prime transactor credit card space,” the analysts wrote. “It has long been a [Discover] investor bull case that Discover has an unpolished diamond in its payments network,” and Capital One’s technology capabilities could help the network better compete against rival operators Visa and Mastercard, the analysts argued. BTIG is upbeat on Capital One’s stock even if the merger, which is awaiting approval from a pair of financial regulators, does not go through. The firm’s price target of $208 a share values the company on a standalone basis and implies about 15% upside from Monday’s close. The primary reason that BTIG still likes Capital One, even on its own, is all the excess capital that the firm has built up since the $35 billion acquisition was announced in February 2024. That could enable Capital One to repurchase $25 billion in stock over the next three years instead, equivalent to 12% of the company, analysts predicted, providing a major lift to earnings per share. Analysts also said that while Capital One is not totally immune to a weakening consumer, its decision to tighten underwriting standards a few years ago was smart and improves its competitive positioning against the likes of American Express and Ally Financial . Shares of Capital One are up nearly 1% Tuesday. COF YTD mountain Capital One Financial (COF) year-to-date performance Big picture BTIG’s optimistic call arrives roughly a week after Capital One’s stock fell in response to an unconfirmed report about the Justice Department’s thinking on the Capital One-Discover merger. The report specifically said the DOJ is concerned about the combined entity’s concentration in the subprime credit cart market. In response, a Capital One spokesperson told CNBC that the deal remains “well-positioned to gain approval” and meets all legal requirements. Citi, KBW and Jefferies all came to the stock’s defense last week, with analysts at each firm still expecting the deal to be completed. Capital One shares have rebounded from that initial sell-off on March 17 and traded above $182 apiece Tuesday — up nearly 6% since March 14, outperforming both the S & P 500 overall and the financial sector in that stretch. The antirust discussion also comes against the backdrop of a legal battle between Capital One and President Donald Trump’s family business. The Trump Organization filed a lawsuit against the credit card lender on March 7, alleging that Capital One violated consumer protections laws by closing its accounts in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Capital One has said it does not close customer accounts for political reasons. Bottom line We’re quite bullish on Capital One — even if we haven’t thrown out an estimate of what the stock would be worth post-Discover like BTIG has with its $427 figure. Our current price target of $210 a share is pretty close to the firm’s standalone target. The pending Discover deal is a major reason why we first initiated a position in Capital One earlier this month. If completed, Capital One will be able to shift some of its transactions onto Discover’s payments network, reducing what it has to pay out in fees to Mastercard and Visa . “We tell people to hold on with this one,” Jim Cramer said during Tuesday’s Morning Meeting . While it’s encouraging to see BTIG’s positivity on Capital One even as a standalone player, our belief remains that the Discover acquisition will go through. Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank will do whatever it takes to appease regulators if there are, in fact, antitrust concerns. One compromise could include a possible sale of Discover’s subprime portfolio. “They could sell a piece of that business, and because the deal is still so accretive, it just makes sense to do what you can to get the deal to go through,” said Jeff Marks, the Investing Club’s director of portfolio analysis. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long COF. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

Screens display the logos and trading information for Capital One Financial and Discover Financial as traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on Feb. 20, 2024.
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U.S. merchants who use JPMorgan to handle payments can now add Affirm to their checkout pages, according to a release.
Consumers will have access to loans ranging from 30 days to 60 months, according to Affirm.
The deal follows a similar announcement from rival Klarna last month, in which the Swedish fintech said it would be available to JPMorgan’s merchants.

Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal and Affirm
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Fintech lender Affirm said Tuesday that it’s reached an agreement with JPMorgan Chase to offer its buy now, pay later loan services to merchants on the bank’s payments network.
U.S. merchants who use JPMorgan to handle payments can now add Affirm to their checkout pages, according to a release. Consumers will have access to loans ranging from 30 days to 60 months, according to Affirm.

The deal follows a similar announcement from rival Klarna last month, in which the Swedish fintech said it would be available to JPMorgan’s merchants. Affirm and Klarna are increasingly going head to head as the buy now, pay later field matures in the U.S.; Affirm is publicly traded and seeking to reliably grow profits, while Klarna recently filed for a U.S. IPO.
“The demand for diverse payment options, flexibility, and seamless transactions from both merchants and their customers is at an all-time high,” Michael Lozanoff, global head of merchant services at J.P. Morgan Payments, said in the release.
“By incorporating Affirm as a payment method into our Commerce Platform, we are empowering businesses to deliver the services they need and the experiences that customers increasingly expect as part of their retail journey,” he said.
Affirm said the deal was an expansion of existing banking and processing relationships with JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank by assets. More