Bitcoin News Roundup for Jan. 18, 2021

With BTC hovering around $36,000 and Iran's government blaming miners for recent blackouts, CoinDesk’s Market’s Daily is back with the latest news roundup.

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

ABOUT

With bitcoin hovering around $36,000 and Iran's government blaming crypto miners for recent blackouts, CoinDesk’s Market’s Daily is back with the latest news roundup.

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This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io.

Today's stories:

Bitcoin Struggles to Recover After Biggest Weekly Price Loss Since September

Prices fell by 6% in the seven days to Jan. 17, a weekly fall not seen since the first week of September.

Central Bank Digital Currencies Not a 'Fad,' MetLife Investment Says

The investment giant predicts CBDCs will continue gaining steam, although a "launch among Western countries seems unlikely to occur anytime soon."

Crypto Long & Short: No, Bitcoin Is Not in a Bubble

Commentators and analysts who say bitcoin is in a “bubble” show they don’t understand what the term means.

Iran Reportedly Seizes 45K Bitcoin Mining Machines After Closure of Illegal Operations

The machines were said to have been consuming 95 megawatts per hour of electricity at a reduced rate.

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.