In this week’s issue of The Protocol, our newsletter on blockchain tech, we’re covering the Optimism’s $42.5M token pledge to Kraken, crypto VC funding, grants for Bitcoin open-source developers, and Polymarket’s (negligible) impact on Polygon’s bottom line.

The latest in blockchain tech upgrades, funding announcements and deals. For the period of Oct. 31-Nov. 6.

Some $350 million notional value of November call options traded on CME with a breakeven bitcoin price of nearly $80,000, anticipating a rally next month, one analyst noted.

The T-REX 2X long MSTR Daily Target ETF (MSTU) has rallied 235% since its introduction six weeks ago, an annualized equivalent return of 57,000%, according to Bloomberg analysis.

As much as a third of the prediction market’s volume is inflated by traders acting as the buyer and seller — an yasa dışı practice in TradFi — on the same trades, Fortune reported. Some could be doing it to farm a future token airdrop.

Citing presidential candidate Donald Trump’s remarks on a U.S. strategic crypto reserve, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis is pushing the idea for state pension funds.

Creator Or Dadosh says Venn creates a “completely new economy” for crypto security.

The second-largest crypto has been locked in a sizable downtrend relative to bitcoin.

Tokens such as BUIDL are at a regulatory disadvantage to stablecoins due to their classification as securities, the report said.

One of the major breakout successes this year for the team behind layer-2 blockchain Polygon is Polymarket. But according to data, Polymarket has only brought in about $27,000 of transaction fees for Polygon PoS in 2024.