Crypto News Roundup for January 21st, 2020

Join CoinDesk Podcast Editor Adam B. Levine and Senior Markets Reporter Brad Keoun for a daily, time saving rundown of top news impacting crypto markets today.

Listen or watch all the new CoinDesk podcast episodes wherever you want.

ABOUT

Today's News:

Bitcoin trading between $8,000 and $9,000 as MACD prepares to go positive for the first time in five months
CME bitcoin futures growing fast as open contracts more than double since December
Publicly traded Argo Mining reports on big revenue gains and mining power ramp-up as the bitcoin halving approaches
Swiss regulators softening their stance on Facebook
Many advanced nations (but not the US) have joined with the BIS to study Central Bank Digital Currencies
DigiXDAO investors opt to liquidate the project and issue refunds worth more than the original investment.
Class action plaintiffs move to consolidate lawsuits against Tether
Xinhau reports that Chinese investment in blockchain projects is down 41% from 2018 (Original Report)
South Korea considers simplifying taxes on cryptocurrency income (Original report)
Indian Central Bank clarifies stance, says there is no "ban" on cryptocurrency.
A new report from the Jerusalem Post says Hamas collected millions in cryptocurrency

HOST

Adam B. Levine

Adam B. Levine joined CoinDesk in 2019 as the editor of its new audio and podcasts division. Previously, Adam founded the long-running Let's Talk Bitcoin! talk show with co-hosts Stephanie Murphy and Andreas M. Antonopoulos.

Finding early success with the show, Adam transformed the podcast's homepage into a full newsdesk and publishing platform, founding the LTB Network in January of 2014 to help broaden the conversation with new and different perspectives. In the Spring of that year, he would go on to launch the first and largest tokenized rewards program for creators and their audience. In what many have called an early influential version of "Steemit"; LTBCOIN, which was awarded to both content creators and members of the audience for participation was distributed until the LTBN was acquired by BTC, Inc. in January of 2017.

With the network launched and growing, in late 2014 Adam turned his attention to the practical challenges of administering the tokenized program and founded Tokenly, Inc. There, he led the development of early tokenized vending machines with Swapbot, tokenized identity solution Tokenpass, e-commerce with TokenMarkets.com and media with Token.fm. Adam owns some BTC, ETH and small positions in a number of other tokens.