Interviews & Crypto News Roundup for January 23rd, 2020

In addition our news roundup, we'll hear from former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo, then we'll take a walk with a modern cypherpunk and senior reporter Leigh Cuen.

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In addition our news roundup, for the next few episodes we’ll also be highlighting select interviews from the CoinDesk crew reporting inside the world economic forum in Davos, Switzerland. Today we’ll hear from Former CFTC chair Christopher Giancarlo on his proposed Digital Dollar push. We’ll end the show by taking a walk with a modern cypherpunk and senior reporter Leigh Cuen.

Today's Stories:

Bitcoin finally breaking out of a range where it’s held over the past week, but it’s bad news for the bulls
During an 18-hour deposition, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov pushed back against a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
In a separate case tying together two recent scandals, former QuadrigaCX users want information about the recently indicted 'Shadow Bank' Crypto Capital
US Exchange Gemini completes accounting firm Deloitte's SOC Type 2 evaluation, their highest security rating.
In Virginia, a lawmaker is pushing the state government to study how blockchain might be used to secure elections and how it might impact the economy moving forward.
In Nevada, a former beauty queen turned bitcoin-friendly entrepreneur is running as a Republican for a U.S. congressional seat
Amun, a Swiss digital-asset issuer has launched a new vehicle for traders who want to bet on a drop in bitcoin’s price
In Tokyo, two men have been accused of stealing 78 million yen (roughly $712,000) from blockchain project VIPSTAR
GreekReporter.com said Thursday that Greece’s Council of State approved Alexander Vinnik's extradition to France where he will face charges of money laundering.

Today's Interviews:

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.