| Bitcoin | $31,168 | 7 day: -20.8% | | Ethereum | $1,161 | 7 day: -3.4% | | All crypto | $905B | 7 day: -13.4% | | Bitcoin dominance | 64.4% | 7 day: -4.7% | Prices as of 5:15 p.m. EST
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Wladimir van der Laan removed Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoin whitepaper from bitcoincore.org (an authoritative resource for bitcoin's development team), deleted references to it, and merged his changes onto Bitcoin Core's GitHub. Craig Wright attempted to serve a lawsuit to operators of Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org concerning alleged copyright infringement, demanding they take down Satoshi Nakamoto's original whitepaper. Context: - Bitcoin's self-proclaimed inventor and Australian data scientist, Craig Wright, sent two community-funded websites (bitcoin.org and bitcoincore.org) a legal notice to remove bitcoin's whitepaper or face a lawsuit.
- Wright is a wealthy businessman with a history of pursuing legal action against his adversaries. Yesterday, we reported that the Court of Appeal in London agreed with Wright that it had jurisdiction to hear his libel case against @hodlnaut (Magnus Granath).
- Bitcoin.org's team decided to continue hosting the 12-year-old whitepaper, primarily written by Satoshi Nakamoto, and take its chances of facing copyright challenges.
- Wladimir van der Laan is the successor of Satoshi Nakamoto's named successor, Gavin Andresen; van der Laan is therefore Satoshi's second successor and Bitcoin Core's Lead Maintainer.
- He tweeted today unambiguously, "so let this be clear: i'm happy to maintain the bitcoin core node, but i will not be personally be a martyr for bitcoin, it's up to you as bitcoiners to protect it."
- We will continue to follow van der Laan closely here at Inside Cryptocurrency.
The Block Crypto 
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 BlackRock Allocation Fund Inc. and BlackRock Funds V are considering buying bitcoin futures, as suggested by new filings submitted to the SEC. BlackRock itself is the world's largest asset manager with trillions in assets under management (AUM). More: - U.S. based investment management company BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) recently filed a prospectus with the SEC on Jan. 20 with dozens of mentions of bitcoin.
- It is unclear how much the asset manager is planning to purchase. Reports indicate that the investment would be cash-settled bitcoin futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
- Blackrock declined to respond to further questions from Bloomberg, such as whether or not the funds had actually purchased bitcoin futures.
Coindesk
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 ECB Eurotower in Frankfurt European Central Bank (ECB) and European Commission authorities expect to conclude some of their research and begin developing their central bank digital currency (CBDC) by the middle of this year. - The ECB and the European Commission published a joint statement on Jan. 19.
- The project will prepare the ECB to issue a digital euro "as a complement to cash."
- Both parties say they are jointly reviewing technical details and "a broad range of policy, legal and technical questions" regarding a possible introduction of a digital euro.
- Neither party has definitely promised to launch a digital euro, and the ECB has repeatedly voiced concerns regarding its potential role in terrorism financing and money laundering.
Law360
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Blockchain analytics company Peckshield confirms that at least $20B worth of capital moved out of China through bitcoin within 2020. - According to the report by PeckShield, capital flight totaled $20B through bitcoin alone.
- The 34-page report traces bitcoin leaving China-focused exchanges like OKEx, Bitfinex, Gate.io, ZB, KuCoin, BiBox, Binance, Bitstamp, Bittrex, and Kraken.
- Peckshield confirms that China remains a significant player in the bitcoin market, possessing jurisdiction over 65% of total bitcoin miners.
TrustNodes
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Fidelity Digital customers with a BlockFi account can take out USD loans backed by their bitcoin. The maximum loan amount is 60% of the USD value of their bitcoin. Selling bitcoin has tax implications, so many bitcoin owners opt to take loans instead of actually selling their bitcoin, to avoid a taxable event. More crypto-friendly offerings from Fidelity: - Fidelity Digital, a former startup incubated within a program funded by Fidelity Investments, will roll out a feature allowing its institutional customers to hold bitcoin as collateral against cash loans from blockchain startup BlockFi.
- According to Bloomberg, the Boston-based Fidelity Digital Assets president said that the company would keep custody for digital currencies instead of issuing cash loans.
- Jessop indicated that having bitcoin to back loans is a "foundational capability" for the market's growth. According to a Fidelity Digital Assets survey, almost 36% of individuals include crypto in their portfolios.
- Potential customers of the services are crypto miners, hedge funds, and over-the-counter (OTC) trading desks, who want to convert their digital currencies into cash but without selling them.
- Clarification: As of 2018, Fidelity Digital Assets was a startup, incubated within the Blockchain Incubator at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology. Fidelity Investments, a separate company from Fidelity Digital Assets, has $7.2T in assets under management (AUM).
Bloomberg
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- Austrian cryptocurrency exchange Bitpanda announced its Visa (NYSE:V) "Bitpanda Card," available for pre-orders that support payment with cryptos including bitcoin, precious metals, and euro payments listed on Bitpanda.
- Thai media reported that the country's Securities and Exchange Commission ordered the cryptocurrency exchange Bitkub to fix issues concerning platform outages, following a spike in trading activity, within the next five days.
- Firo (FIRO), the privacy-centric cryptocurrency based on a proof-of-work consensus and formerly known as Zcoin, suffered from a 51% attack on Jan. 19, just weeks before the developer's team could deploy Chainlocks technology to resist such an attack.
- One of MindGeek's adult entertainment platforms, PornHub, now reportedly supports four new cryptocurrencies as a payment option for countries like the U.S., U.K., and Singapore, including the SEC-charged XRP.
- Celo (CELO) announced plans to develop a euro-pegged stablecoin called cEUR and test on-chain governance proposals until the expected token launch slated for March 2021.
- The Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank said that the Swedish Central Bank is working with Corda distributed ledger technology for its e-krona CBDC. During a cryptocurrency finance conference held in St. Moritz on Jan. 20, Cecilia Skingsley admitted that Accenture (NYSE:ACN) recommended Corda to underpin the e-krona.
- J Capital Research alleged that Bit Digital (NASDAQ:BTBT) is a fraudulent business and peer-to-peer scam that has duped investors out of $42M.
- Nexo manages $4B in assets and has over 1M users. See why fintech consumers are banking on crypto.*
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 |  | Curated by Associated Press fanboy, eye-strained news terminal watcher, and bitcoin follower since $1, Aaron Wise. Temporarily listening to news squawk boxes in Florida while awaiting the construction of cryptopia. |  | | Editor | Charlotte Hayes-Clemens is an editor and writer based in Vancouver. She has dabbled in both the fiction and non-fiction world, having worked at HarperCollins Publishers and more recently as a writing coach for new and self-published authors. Proper semi-colon usage is her hill to die on. | |
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