Mastercard Acquiring Zerohash 🏦, x402 Starter Kit 🤖, Stablecoin Tax 🪙

Mastercard is in late-stage talks to acquire crypto startup Zerohash for $1.5-2 billion, following the company's $104 million funding round ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR TLDR Crypto 2025-10-31 📈 Markets & Business Mastercard poised to acquire Zerohash for ~$2 billion (6 minute read) Mastercard is in late-stage talks to acquire crypto infrastructure startup Zerohash for $1.5-2 billion, following the company's $104 million funding round in September at a $1 billion valuation. The potential acquisition comes after Mastercard lost a bidding war for stablecoin startup BVNK to Coinbase, which entered exclusivity for a deal reportedly worth around $2 billion. Zerohash, founded in 2017, provides broader infrastructure than stablecoin-focused competitors like Bridge and BVNK, offering APIs for crypto trading platforms and tokenization alongside stablecoin payment rails. Hong Kong Regulator Warns of Risks in Digital Asset Treasuries (3 minute read) Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has raised concerns over Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) trading at inflated premiums and warned investors about related risks. The regulator is monitoring DAT operations and may introduce guidelines to ensure investor protection, citing cases in the US where DAT stocks traded far above the value of their crypto holdings. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange has already rejected several DAT proposals, maintaining restrictions against firms holding large liquid crypto reserves as DAT momentum builds globally. 🚀 Innovation & Launches x402 Starter Kit (2 minute read) The x402 starter kit allows developers to build paid APIs requiring USDC micropayments before processing requests, with three core components: an Express server, the Merchant Executor for payment verification/settlement, and a service demonstrating OpenAI/EigenAI integration. The kit supports both facilitator-based settlement and local direct settlement modes across multiple networks, including Base, Polygon, Avalanche, and Solana, with payment verification using EIP-3009 authorization signatures. Developers can deploy custom frontends and can configure AI providers (OpenAI or EigenAI), network parameters, and settlement modes through environment variables, with the full payment flow handling 402 responses, signature verification, blockchain settlement, and service execution. Scaling Base: Doubling capacity in 30 days (8 minute read) Base plans to double its gas limit from 75 to 150 Mgas/s by the end of Q4 2025 and reach 400-500 Mgas/s by early 2026 by migrating infrastructure to Reth and addressing four scaling bottlenecks that previously constrained growth. The Pectra hardfork doubled Ethereum blob space in May, with PeerDAS (Fusaka fork) launching December 3, followed by Blob Parameter Only forks increasing blob targets from 6 to 14 by January 2026, while TrieDB database restructuring promises 8-10x execution performance improvements for storage operations. Base successfully handled 1,500 transactions per second in June with median fees under 5 cents, targeting sub-cent, sub-second transactions for billions of users while achieving 99.9% of blocks built in under 2 seconds. 💡 Guides & Tutorials How A2A, AP2, and x402 Enable Agentic Commerce (5 minute read) A2A, AP2, and x402 form the communication and transaction stack that lets AI agents autonomously interact, agree, and pay one another. A2A defines the base grammar for agent communication, AP2 extends it for auditability with cart mandates detailing price and terms, and x402 (by Coinbase) executes verified onchain payments. In a working example, Bankless's agent hired an AI debate judge, sending a request via A2A, receiving a price quote via AP2, attesting and paying through x402, and receiving the debate output stored on EigenDA. Together, these protocols define how agents talk, agree, and pay, forming the foundation for autonomous agentic commerce. The "Stablecoin Tax" and the Credible Neutrality Debate (5 minute read) Major chains like Solana, BSC, and Arbitrum are leaking over $1.1B annually in stablecoin yield to issuers like Circle and Tether (40% more than their combined fee revenue). On Solana alone, roughly $15B in stablecoins (two-thirds in USDC) generates about $500M yearly for Circle, part of which goes to Coinbase via its revenue-sharing deal, funding Base, Solana's direct competitor. Developers would like to launch an aligned, native stablecoin and redirect yield toward SOL buybacks or burns. However, others warn that if L1s compromise credible neutrality to capture yield, they risk turning from property rights systems into fintech companies, sacrificing the trust that gives blockchains long-term legitimacy. 🦄 Miscellaneous The Broken Incentives Behind DeFi Vaults (5 minute read) Most DeFi yield vaults are structurally flawed, prioritizing opaque incentives and TVL growth over user safety or transparency. Many vaults obscure wallet activity, misreport APYs, and recycle deposits to inflate their own metrics, turning "DeFi" into centralized yield farming. Whitelisted vaults with predefined, verifiable yield sources enforced by smart contracts (like STEX AMM), and competitive vaults where strategists must post insurance capital and compete for deposits, bearing losses if risks backfire (as seen in Cap Money Strategist), are both safer options. In both models, incentives are realigned toward defined, transparent risk exposure, rather than the current standard, where users unknowingly shoulder all the risk. Ethereum's Future Tech Stack Is What Institutions Are Building On (3 minute read) Dismissing Ethereum for high gas fees is like rejecting the internet in the dial-up era, as banks are adopting today's Ethereum stack with tomorrow's upgrades. Institutional builders aren't choosing 2015 Ethereum but the 2026+ ecosystem: Fusaka scaling to 12k+ TPS, zk-L2s like Lighter nearing Stage 2 decentralization, and ERC-7683 introducing seamless interoperability. With MegaETH targeting 100k+ TPS and zk tech soon pushing Ethereum's L1 beyond 10k TPS, the network's secure base layer and scalable rollup stack make it the most institution-ready platform for the onchain economy. ⚡ Quick Links BlackRock's ETH ETF Ranks #5 in US Trading Volume (2 minute read) BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) ranked #5 among all US ETFs by daily trading volume, logging over 3.3 million shares traded, ahead of thousands of traditional funds. Binance.US Rejects Political Motive Behind USD1 Listing (2 minute read) Binance.US dismissed claims that its listing of Trump-linked USD1 stablecoin was political payback for Donald Trump's pardon of founder Changpeng Zhao, saying the move was approved earlier through "ordinary business." x402 Alignment Map (3 minute read) This market map indicates various projects' alignment with the x402 payments standard, including Cloudflare, EigenLayer, and Google. Jamie Dimon admits he was wrong about Bitcoin (2 minute read) In an interview alongside Larry Fink, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that Bitcoin is real and will be widely adopted. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/40d1adc2/6 Track your referrals here. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of crypto investors and builders, you may want to advertise with us. 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