Eagle-eyed investors love an arbitrage opportunity: spotting and profiting from inefficiencies in how assets are priced. Bitcoin treasuries, this year’s hottest and strangest Wall Street fad, are giving them new opportunities to test their skills.

Strategy, and some others, trade at a premium to their bitcoin holdings. But many trade at a discount, in seeming contradiction of the efficient markets theory. In any event, the trend has entered a new phase: consolidation.

The market, though, has responded in an odd fashion. Strive shares fell after the merger was announced, and Semler’s rose, but not as much as might have been expected.

Bitcoin treasuries had already presented investors with a market mystery — why companies would trade at valuations detached from the bitcoin they hold, for reasons that aren’t exactly clear. The Strive deal drives home another discrepancy: that different bitcoin hoards can trade at different prices depending on who is holding them.

An attempt to exploit an inefficiency in market pricing might have accidentally prompted its unwinding.

"The obvious trade right now is to buy Semler shares, cheap to the implied share swap value, and separately short the Strive stock."