Bitcoin News Roundup for July 29, 2020

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ABOUT

With the battle for CBDC dominance in the East heating up and smart contract use skyrocketing as Ethereum turns five, CoinDesk's Markets Daily is back with another news roundup.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

Today's stories:

Bitcoin's Latest Rally May Have Staying Power, Exchange Flows Suggest

The flow of bitcoin and stablecoins in and out of cryptocurrency exchanges observed on Monday suggests the latest price breakout may persist.

Soaring DeFi Usage Drives Ethereum Contract Calls to New Record

Coin Metrics reported the daily number of smart contract calls on Ethereum jumped to 3.11 million – a new record.

Digital Yen Now 'Top Priority' for Japan Central Bank, Says Senior Official

The comments mark a shift in priority for Japan as it seeks to counter the economic threat from regional rival China.

Crypto Wallet Maker Ledger Loses 1M Email Addresses in Data Theft

An unknown hacker gained access to the wallet maker's marketing database, stealing a million email addresses as well as personal information for 9,000 customers.

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.