Bitcoin News Roundup for Nov. 17, 2020

With bitcoin above $17K for the first time since 2018, CoinDesk's Markets Daily is back with your bitcoin news roundup.

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

ABOUT

CoinDesk’s Markets Daily is back for your latest crypto news roundup!

This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com and Nexo.io.

Today's stories:

Bitcoin Slices Through $17,000 as Market Cap Nears All-Time High

Bitcoin last traded above $17,000 on Jan. 7, 2018.

Coinbase Goes Down as Bitcoin Nears $17K

Coinbase has suffered a number of outages during busy trading periods this year, including most recently on Oct. 27.

Gold Lags Far Behind Bitcoin as Vaccine Optimism Buoys Markets

Bitcoin is outshining the precious metal by a significant margin as expectations soar of a swift global economic recovery enabled by promising coronavirus vaccines.

China's Crypto Miners Struggle to Pay Power Bills as Regulators Clamp Down on OTC Desks

Miners in China have reportedly been struggling to pay for electricity after authorities started cracking down on over-the-counter brokers in the country.

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.