Crypto News Roundup for January 17th, 2020

Join CoinDesk Podcast Editor Adam B. Levine and Senior Markets Reporter Brad Keoun for a daily, time saving rundown of top news impacting crypto markets today.

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

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Today's Crypto Roundup:

Bitcoin gaining today after two straight days of declines, up 1.3 percent to around $8800
The Block reports that Grayscale Investments, a unit of Digital Currency Group, which is the owner of CoinDesk, raised more than $600 million from investors last year. And that’s up from 66% in 2018https://grayscale.co/insights/grayscale-2018-digital-asset-investment-report/.
The Libra Association, working under the auspices of Facebook to create a digital currency, has designated the leadership of a committee that will coordinate the token’s proposed design
And crypto tax legislation is getting a new life in U.S. congress
Some investors at a crypto conference this week in Switzerland say that the U.S. may be entering a new cold war with China - over the future of money
Back in North America, The Block reports that most Canadian crypto exchanges will likely fall under the country’s securities laws following new guidance published Thursday
And just a day after reports emerged that the Malta-based crypto exchange Binance will soon restrict access to Japanese residents, the exchange now says it’s eyeing the launch of a new trading platform for the Asian market
Patrick McDonnell, 47, was sentenced to 33 months on Thursday and ordered to pay $224,352 to victims, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York

Any thoughts, questions, comments, suggestions or complaints? Send an email to adamlevine@coindesk.com

We'll be back on Tuesday with the next Markets Daily from CoinDesk

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.