Block.one, the company behind EOSIO (EOS), issued a $50,000 grant to Genobank for its open-source app on April 29. The grant is designed to facilitate anonymous access to COVID-19 testing. Genobank announced at the start of April that its app, Agerona, was being developed alongside the Eos-based blockchain platform, Telos. Block.one issued the grant in partnership with its venture capital wing, EOS VC, and German fintech incubator, FinLab EOS VC. Block.one invests in Eos-based COVID-19 testing app Agerona connects users anonymously with test suppliers in their country. Tests contain unique barcodes that create a free and anonymous account on the …

A small southern Italian town of 550 residents, Castellino del Biferno, has started minting their own currency, called Ducati, as a method to support their local economy during the coronavirus Pandemic. The town mayor Enrico Fratangelo, had been studying minting money for 12 years before having the opportunity to put his ideas to the test. "We decided to mint money to make sure the local economy could withstand the impact of the situation. However small this economy may be, there are three or four businesses still open, without considering bars or pubs," Fratangelo explained. Supporting the Economy Ducati are distributed …

Blockchain platform Waves.Exchange has launched a new prediction market allowing users to bet on whether the spread of the coronavirus pandemic has passed its peak. Customers can now purchase ‘COVID-UP-SEP20’ and ‘COVID-DOWN-SEP20’ tokens to bet on whether the number of new weekly cases worldwide will exceed April 4–10’s record of 595,802 confirmed infections before September. Waves.Exchange’s tokens are purchased in exchange for the stablecoin, Neutrino Dollar (USDN). All USDN used to buy the tokens are locked in escrow until September, and then distributed among the winners. The campaign will ostensibly contribute to coronavirus charity initiatives. Making waves with their new …

On March 16, YouTube released a statement warning its creator community that video removals may increase during the coronavirus pandemic. The popular video-sharing platform said that its system currently relies on a combination of people and technology, noting that machine learning is being leveraged to detect potentially harmful content. Once these algorithms find “harmful content,” human reviewers are called upon for assessment. The company also stated that new measures are being taken during the COVID-19 crisis to rely more on technology to help with some of the work normally performed by human reviewers. The blog post states: “Automated systems will …

The United Kingdom’s Open University has developed a COVID-19 proof-of-immunity app that combines blockchain with a privacy-preserving data solution from web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. The prototype app, undergoing testing as of April 29, would support the proof and verification of tamper-resistant test results for COVID-19 antigen tests and vaccination coverage. The solution could ostensibly be used to provide frontline workers, healthcare professionals and the wider public with reliable immunity certificates that would be stored on a distributed, immutable and trusted blockchain-based registry. Alongside consortium blockchain technology, the app uses solid “pods” — an acronym for the personal online data stores …

In 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a former Wall Street trader turned professor, described the idea of a “black swan” event. Black swans are defined as being rare, of major consequence and impossible to predict, though he tempered their predictability with an acknowledgment that, in hindsight, they are explainable. A confluence of events has arisen in 2020 to create a black swan event unlike anything the world has witnessed since the Great Depression. It dwarfs even the 2008 financial crisis. After the global financial crisis of 2008, Taleb spoke of the importance of factoring in the possibility of black swan events …

Shortages of personal protective equipment, or PPE, used by health care professionals are posing a tremendous challenge to the United States health care system as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PPE helps protect health care personnel from potentially infectious patients and materials. The CDC recently released a guide on strategies to optimize supplies of PPE. In addition to these guidelines, technology solutions are being implemented to enable more trustworthy information and accelerated discovery, resilience and adaptation to meet current medical supply demands. For example, technology giant IBM launched its Rapid …

Crypto analyst Mati Greenspan won the title of “father of the year” from the two hosts of Virtual Blockchain Week as he tended to his child while delivering a presentation to the virtual conference’s attendees. Greenspan explained that Bitcoin and legacy assets were more closely correlated than you might think in the wake of COVID-19. Resplendent in a sharp bowtie, the founder of Quantum Economics displayed the following graph “that shows what’s happening in crypto.” The following chart represents Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 on a range of 1 (perfect correlation) to -1 (inverse correlation). For crypto enthusiasts hoping …

Born within a financial meltdown and crisis, Bitcoin (BTC) has found itself again in the role of a proto-savior for the current failings of fiat and national currencies. Those failings namely being that national fiat currencies continue to be printed at a whim when political leaders are caught in a catch-22 between mass poverty and mass currency inflation — with any result likely being a compromised and unsatisfying mélange of stagflation. Nevertheless, Bitcoin still isn’t immune from the pressures of a world steered toward uncharted waters. While one might respect the philosophical rigor of Bitcoin, it goes without saying that …

Cointelegraph is co-presenting and covering Virtual Blockchain Week, a series of talks from blockchain luminaries over the next five days. Speakers include well-known figures in the industry such as Changpeng Zhao, Caitlin Long and Anthony Pompliano alongside opinion-makers like Brittany Kaiser, Alyze Sam and Charlie Shrem. Cointelegraph journalist Rachel Wolfson is speaking on Wednesday about what it’s like covering the blockchain industry. Every day this week Cointelegraph.com will be filled with articles about sessions at Virtual Blockchain Week. Our journalists will hold interviews with speakers, sharing their insights exclusively on our website. You can also follow along and watch Virtual …

As staying home becomes the new normal, the popular video conferencing app Zoom continues to flourish. Despite multiple privacy concerns, on April 21, it was reported that more than 300 million people used Zoom’s flagship video conferencing app. It’s clear that Zoom still reigns supreme during the coronavirus pandemic, even as Facebook, Google and other tech titans create their own video conferencing alternatives. Nevertheless, a new influx of users means that Zoom is being leveraged for different reasons, including services that individuals would typically pay for. Although Zoom may be accommodating for large group participation, charging users to join Zoom …

Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Bitcoin pushes to clear $7,750 as key weekly close approaches It’s a nail-biting time for Bitcoin owners. The cryptocurrency mounted a strong rebound and surged from $6,800 to $7,600 this week — with a dramatic surge on Thursday taking many traders by surprise. But the question now is whether these higher prices are here to …