Custom cars

Good morning. Ari Hodara, a 58-year-old Frenchman, just got an original Pablo Picasso painting valued at €1 million for the low-low price of €100… let us explain. 

Hodora was the winner of the third iteration of a Picasso raffle raising money for Alzheimer’s research. This time around, organizers netted €12 million (€1 million of which goes to the gallery supplying the painting) selling 120,000 raffle tickets to art lovers all around the world. 

Sure, it would be nice to win a masterpiece, but imagine the stress of deciding where to hang it?

Today’s reading time is 6 minutes.

Markets: Canada’s main stock index rose again yesterday, bolstered by continued investor optimism about U.S.-Iran peace talks. Meanwhile, shares of Canadian spacetech company MDA Space hit their ⁠highest ​levels since last August on the news of Amazon’s Globalstar acquisition.

Canadian regulators are tired of being bested by sketchy crypto traders.

What happened: Fintrac — Canada’s money laundering watchdog — has stripped the registrations of 53 money services businesses (MSBs) based in B.C. since the start of March, per the Investigative Journalism Foundation. The spree is part of a wider clampdown on shady crypto firms carrying out scams, criminal financing, and illegal money transfers.   

Zoom out: Crypto exchanges must register with Fintrac as an MSB to operate in Canada and offer buying, selling, and trading services. However, once registered, many of these firms simply reroute the crypto traded on their platforms to foreign exchanges and wallets.

Why it matters: Canada’s lax protections have earned it a reputation as a global laggard in fighting crypto fraud. This recent crackdown — along with changes requiring criminal background checks for MSB registrations — suggests that regulators have finally gotten the memo.
 
Yes, but: Critics believe that tighter, crypto-specific regulation is still needed, and that regulators and law enforcement must have more capacity to get a fair shot at combating the many illicit firms that don’t even bother to register.—QH

Ottawa axes the federal gas tax until Labour Day. On his first day with a majority government, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a temporary tax holiday, which he said will cut the cost of gas by 10 cents per litre starting next week. Carney pointed to the Iran war driving up prices at the pump as the reason for the move. Gas prices have jumped by over 40 cents per litre in some parts of the country since the conflict began. (BNN Bloomberg)

Amazon scoops up Starlink rival in a US$11.6 billion deal. In one of its largest-ever acquisitions, the e-commerce giant is buying satellite operator Globalstar. Amazon is planning to launch a satellite network for smartphones by 2028, taking on rival Starlink, which already supports over 12 million consumer devices through its network of satellites. (Reuters)

Feds meet with Anthropic over hacking concerns. AI Minister Evan Solomon met with officials from Anthropic yesterday to discuss its newest model, Mythos, which the company says may be capable of hacking even the world’s most sophisticated computer systems. A group of Bay Street execs and regulators met last week to discuss the cybersecurity risks of the new model, while the U.S. Treasury has requested access to Mythos to start looking for its own security vulnerabilities. (Globe and Mail)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

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🤝 Meet Matthew Booth. He’s a professional photographer and the head of marketing for Anchored Coffee, a popular roastery based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, that has collaborated on coffee blends with celebrity chefs like Matty Matheson and Brad Leone. We sat down with Matt to talk about their brand and the ins and outs of running a roastery.

Can you talk about the economics of running a roaster in Canada right now? What goes into producing a $25 bag of coffee?

A crazy amount of things, it’s a long list. First, the tariff situation changed things a lot. It made green coffee prices skyrocket. Having your cost of goods go through the roof isn’t great, but it gives us an opportunity to prove that we’re for the people by not jacking our prices up. Our margins shrank. Instead of raising prices and hitting customers, we dug into it, and we managed to lower our shipping costs, which in 2026 is rare. 

We’re not here to have this crazy payday. Coffee is not the business for that. It’s more about having a great crew, keeping them going well, keeping us going, giving people great coffee, having it feel human, and making their day better. Everything is focused on that.

What is it about Anchored Coffee’s brand that sets it apart? 

The one thing they had dialled from the start was that the product is great. The coffee is awesome. But you can have the best product in the world, and people don’t actually care unless you can communicate that and have an identity people want to ride with. There are so many good products out there and so many places to spend your money. Our aim is to get across that maritime energy and what it means to live out here and be out here.

Part of that is the outdoors. We’re not planning elaborate media trips. It’s more: do the things you love, and coffee is along for the ride. It’s just a part of it. If we’re going to play hockey on the outdoor rink, we’ll bring coffee because it’s warm and tastes good. We’ll take some photos and that’s it. 

Can you explain why coffee seems to have gotten so much more expensive lately?

Droughts and weather are factors. Another big one is shipping from the source of the beans. Importing green beans is expensive. A lot of shipments don’t come directly into Canada, they go through U.S. hubs first, then get distributed, so tariffs also play a role now. 

Everything's expensive these days, so price can be a real issue for people. But coffee is something you have every day. You can say life’s tight, or you can make your morning better. Things are tough, give yourself that little light in the morning, give yourself some grace.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full Q&A here.

Apparently, buying a new sports car off the shelf is no longer cool enough to brag about at ritzy dinner parties. These days, the ultra-wealthy are building their supercars from scratch. 

Driving the news: U.K. luxury automaker Rolls-Royce is planning to build 100 custom, one-of-a-kind EVs for a group of invite-only clients, with price tags expected to range from £4.5 million to £25 million. 

Why it’s happening: Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, and Bentley have all benefited from a surge in luxury vehicle customization — Ferrari’s CEO even joked that with the current pace of custom jobs, they’ll soon be able to sell a $10 billion car. 

Why it matters: With more billionaires being minted than ever before, this trend of custom cars reflects the reality of the K-shaped economy, with a growing share of consumer spending done by the wealthy on luxury goods. There may be fewer people in the market for the mid-range, luxury-ish vehicles, but there’s suddenly a lot more willing to pay millions for a custom Rolls-Royce modelled after a dog (we wish we made that up).—LA

🍗 32. Meat products at Canadian grocery stores that a CBC News investigation found customers were being overcharged for by up to 16.7%. At seven different grocers across Canada, packages of everything from chicken thighs to beef briskets were weighed incorrectly (often with their packaging), causing them to be mispriced.

Before you go, make sure you play today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who!