It’s no secret that Stripe has doubled down on its crypto offerings, enabling crypto purchases in the EU back in July and announcing a Pay with Crypto feature earlier this month. This week, the fintech giant made its dedication even clearer with its largest deal to date: its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge for an eye-popping $1.1 billion. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha and Devin Coldewey kicked off the show with their thoughts on the deal – mainly how surprising it is to see anyone spending over $1 billion on crypto in 2024.

But of course, there was so much more startup and venture news for the crew to get into this week. Listen to the full episode to hear about:

Equity will be recording live at Disrupt on Tuesday, so we hope to see you there! 

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.