Bitcoin News Roundup for Jan. 28, 2021

With digital-market traders taking GameStop’s stock gyrations as a moment for self-reflection, CoinDesk’s Market Daily is back with the latest news roundup.

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

ABOUT

With digital-market traders taking GameStop’s stock gyrations as a moment for self-reflection, CoinDesk’s Market Daily is back with the latest news roundup.

Add Markets Daily to your Alexa Flash Briefing here.

This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io.

Today's stories:

What does GameStop mean for cryptocurrencies?

Digital-market traders found amusement in the GameStop saga. They also saw an opportunity for self-reflection. Here's what Niall Ferguson, Caitlin Long, Mati Greenspan and Jonathan Mohan said.

“Gotta admit it’s really something to see Wall Streeters with a long history of treating our economy as a casino complain about a message board of posters also treating the market as a casino. Anyways, Tax the Rich,” U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez writes. (Twitter)

Guggenheim CIO Minerd, who has predicted a bitcoin price of $400K, tells Bloomberg TV the base of institutional buyers is “just not there” to push bitcoin’s price above $35,000 (CoinDesk)

Blockstream buys $25M of bitcoin mining machines from MicroBT (CoinDesk)

Crypto’s young believers stoke craze for penny stocks in companies with exposure to bitcoin (Bloomberg)

Riding the coattails of crypto’s bull run, DeFi token UNI from Uniswap breaks $15 on Coinbase exchange, has nearly doubled in past seven days (CoinDesk)

GameStop backlash could lead to curbs on “memetic disturbances,” or even “the squeezening,” Preston Byrne writes in op-ed (CoinDesk Opinion)

Market chaos fueled by bands of retail traders reportedly leads to counter-measures from Wall Street firms TD Ameritrade and Wells Fargo, as a spokeswoman for U.S. President Joe Biden says the new administration is “monitoring” the GameStop situation (CoinDesk)

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission “actively monitoring the ongoing market volatility in the options and equities markets” (SEC)

“What seems to be unfolding here is a crypto-esque farce combining volatile trading and chatroom-driven tips reminiscent of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and penny stocks, all in a market juiced by pandemic stimulus,” Lionel Laurent writes in column (Bloomberg Opinion)

Goldman Sachs strategist joins chorus saying “buy the dip” in stocks (Bloomberg)

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.