For an industry that says it wants to overtake the traditional financial system, it is surprising that #Crypto players are focusing so heavily on old-style stock listings. These offerings are a lucrative business for the giant banks that choreograph them, exactly the companies crypto enthusiasts hope to unseat. Going public also subjects crypto companies to just the kind of financial regulations they hate. Maybe crypto executives just want to get rich, and a stock exchange listing is one more way to separate investors from their cash. Along the way, crypto has become a big part of an already frothy stock market. Do a quick tally of the biggest crypto stocks, including exchanges like Coinbase, companies such as Strategy that hold crypto, plus bitcoin miners and the rapidly growing crypto exchange-traded funds, and you get more than $400 billion in crypto stocks trading on U.S. stock exchanges. The skeptical view of that $400 billion is that it is a house of cards. Most of the underlying assets are only worth what other investors are willing to pay for them. Just two years ago, amid the FTX debacle, investors valued those assets far below where they trade now. Crypto conquered the stock market again with the public debut of crypto exchange Bullish, whose stock soared as much as 220% on its opening day of its IPO. The offering followed a glittering IPO from stablecoin issuer Circle and offerings from a raft of companies that have stuffed themselves with crypto. it is worth roughly $10 billion at its closing price of $68, up 84% from its IPO price. While it is growing nicely, that valuation is something more than a modest premium to the $80 million in profits it generated last year. Bullish lost more than that in the first quarter. (Give it credit for sneaking its ticker symbol [BLSH] past the arbiters of taste at the New York Stock Exchange.) Bullish is led by CEO Tom Farley. His previous job as president of the NYSE gives him impeccable credentials in traditional finance. His take is that investors are betting crypto will take over the world. “The market is pricing in the potential for blockchain technology to power all of major global finance,” he told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. Some of his underwriters, which include JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, might object to that plan. Until the past year, crypto has been a sideshow for the financial system. The collapse of FTX was largely contained. Now, hundreds of billions of dollars of crypto stocks are trading on traditional markets. Stablecoin legislation signed by the president last month brings crypto even closer to traditional finance. Maybe crypto will take over the world. But what if it doesn’t? https://www.theinformatio..