Bitcoin News Roundup for Dec. 16, 2020

With BTC breaking $20K for the first time and the Fed announcing yet another change to monetary policy, CoinDesk’s Market’s Daily is back with another crypto news roundup.

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

ABOUT

With BTC breaking $20K for the first time and the Fed announcing yet another change to monetary policy, CoinDesk’s Market’s Daily is back with another crypto news roundup.

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com and Nexo.io.

Today's stories:

Bitcoin Hits Record Above $20K as Analysts Remain Confident of Future

Bitcoin has risen above $20,000 to reach the highest point in its 12-year history.

New York's Quontic Becomes First US Bank to Offer a Bitcoin Rewards Debit Card

Queens-based Quontic Bank has become the first FDIC-insured financial institution to launch a bitcoin rewards checking program.

New Federal Reserve 'Qualitative' Approach Could Push Further Into Experimental Realm

"Qualitative" is the new "quantitative" as economists predict the Federal Reserve will move to add subjectivity to its rules on money printing.

Silk Road's Ulbricht Being Considered for Pardon by Trump: Report

The White House Counsel's office reported to be reviewing the case documents for the convicted Silk Road operator.

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.