The Block

Quick Take Payments company Stripe is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire the stablecoin-focused fintech firm Bridge. A decision is yet to be made, and the parties could still back out of the potential deal, Bloomberg reported.

Ethereum futures funding rates have reached positive highs not observed since just before the early August flash crash.According to an analyst, these market conditions heighten concerns regarding the potential risks of over-leveraged liquidations.

Robinhood is set to expand its bitcoin and ether support to futures products amid a broader rollout of advanced trading tools for the platform.It confirms earlier reports in the summer that Robinhood wanted to launch bitcoin and ether futures in the U.S. — something the firm said it had “no immediate plans” for at the time.

Quick Take Nishad Singh’s lawyers said the former engineering director of FTX should not serve jail time given his limited role in the exchange’s collapse, and his cooperation. Singh is set to be sentenced on Oct. 30.

Quick Take In a new blog post, Buterin emphasized the need for Ethereum to scale significantly, with a goal of 100,000 transactions per second across L1 and L2s. Buterin also explored solutions focusing on further developing data availability sampling and scaling Ethereum’s base layer.

Quick Take SCB said its stablecoin service for international payments has been “fully commercialized” after graduating from the central bank’s regulatory sandbox. The bank said the service enhancescross-border transaction efficiency by using stablecoins for settlement.

Quick Take Ethereum’s deflationary mechanism is holding, but there are signs of a reversal. The following is an excerpt from The Block’s Data and Insights newsletter.

Quick Take The STKD Bitcoin & Gold ETF is geared toward cushioning against inflation and “currency debasement” in the future. BTGD is also the first ETF to bring both bitcoin and gold in “‘stacked approach’, achieving more than $1 of exposure for every $1 invested,” Quantity Funds said.

Quick Take The attack began on Radiant’s Ethereum Layer 2 Arbitrum instance and then moved onto BNB Chain, Arkham data shows. The suspected exploiter’s wallet holds over $32 million worth of Arbitrum-based assets and around $18 million worth of tokens on BNB Chain.

Quick Take Cosmos co-founder Jae Kwon raised concerns about the development and security of Cosmos Hub’s liquid staking module amid links to North Korean agents. Italy plans to raise capital gains tax on bitcoin to 42% as part of the country’s budget for 2025, according to local newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. U.S. prosecutors have called for a reduced five-year prison sentence for Ilya Lichtenstein over money laundering charges related to the 2016 Bitfinex hack, citing his cooperation in the case and assistance