Bitcoin News Roundup for Feb. 2, 2021

With BTC rising and a look at what could happen in a post-COVID economy, 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 BTC rising and a look at what could happen in a post-COVID economy, CoinDesk’s Market Daily is back with the latest news roundup.

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This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io.

Today's stories:

Federal Reserve Soup Now Includes Bitcoin, DeFi, Silver, GameStop

Market news from crypto to Wall Street is all over the place.

"It's pretty obvious that the WSB traders are applying the same principles of the digital/CryptoAsset world to the stock market and they are loving the fact that the old schoolers are hating it," billionaire Mark Cuban writes in blog post. (CoinDesk)

Coinbase has reportedly tapped Nasdaq for its planned direct listing, according to The Block.

Winklevosses' Gemini crypto exchange inks partnership with crypto lender Genesis to give customers option to earn up to 7.4% annual interest on holding, CoinDesk

OKEx announces plans to integrate Lightning Network in Q1. (OKEx via Twitter)

Robinhood has raised $3.4 billion from investors over the past several days, (CoinDesk)

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is expected to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives' financial-services committee on Feb. 18, (CoinDesk)

Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, global debt was at a far higher level than before the financial crisis of 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. The figure reached $197 trillion at the end of 2019, for a debt-to-GDP ratio of 226%, according to an IMF blog post on Monday.

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.