Volatility has been the dominant theme in financial markets lately. As uncertainty around COVID-19 and its impact on the economy deepens, markets have been swinging wildly. We’ve seen the S&P 500 falling off a cliff as well as risk assets across the board taking a beating. Cryptocurrency markets have been no different and have exhibited extreme volatility. Amid the pessimism, Bitcoin (BTC) broke below the $4,000 mark on Black Thursday and fell nearly 50% from recent highs. It’s been over a month since the crash, and though we have seen prices bouncing back sharply, the sentiment has not improved. There …

On April 21, Cointelegraph hosted its first virtual Cointelegraph Talks meetup. The event consisted of two expert panels discussing major news and developments in the crypto world today, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. What we heard on Greenback 2.0 The panel tackling the subject of a United States central bank-backed digital dollar, featured guests with backgrounds in crypto, software, finance, legal and monetary policy. Morgan Ricks is a professor at Vanderbilt Law and lead author of a paper on FedAccounts for digital dollars that helped shape recent bills proposing such accounts as a way to distribute COVID-19 stimulus. …

After years of unsuccessful efforts to block Telegram in Russia, the country’s government is now considering lifting the ban due to the coronavirus outbreak. According to an April 22 report by Russian news agency Kommersant, two deputies at the State Duma have prepared a draft bill on terminating the ban of Telegram’s encrypted messenger app in Russia. If you can’t beat it, join it In the bill, the State Duma deputies reportedly argued that Telegram has become an “official service” used by state authorities to raise awareness about the measures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. The officials elaborated that local …

There is an effort underway to roll out a blockchain voting app in time for November elections. A voting app is being developed by WinterGreen Research and Government Blockchain Association, or GBA, which uses blockchain technology to “make fraud detectable”. COVID-19 will drive adoption Susan Eustis, President of WinterGreen Research told Cointelegraph that she expects COVID-19 to accelerate its adoption: “We anticipate that the digital voting app will roll out quickly, just as the telemedicine market was eclipsed by virtual care delivery from Cisco WebEx and Zoom. Physicians went from doing 200 televisits per year to 36,000 per week within …

The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening to plunge the world into the deepest crisis since the Great Depression and could deprive global economies of $5.5 trillion over the next two years. China’s economy shrank for the first time in 44 years, and their gross domestic product fell by 6.8% in the first quarter compared with last year. The pandemic was, naturally, to blame. More worryingly, year-on-year retail sales fell drastically in March. Shops, offices and factories are now starting to reopen, but people remain anxious and movement is restricted. However, businesses in Asia are currently recovering from the horrible financial hangover …

The headlines are scary. Millions of infections — over 170,000 deaths. Nothing will ever replace the lives lost or bring back pre-COVID-19 “normal” again. While our hearts and deepest sympathies go out to everyone whose life has changed due to this pandemic, there are long-term implications that, for those of us in the business of privacy, are just as scary as the pandemic itself. Apple and Google are collaborating on contact tracing solutions, and governments are tracking the movement and even biometrics of citizens through their personal devices. Once the threat of COVID-19 is dealt with via social distancing, medical …

Bitcoin (BTC) will be most attractive to United States citizens whom the government refused to bail with $1,200, one market commentator says. As it emerged that stimulus checks may be going towards purchasing BTC, Gabor Gurbacs, digital asset director at VanEck, argued that those left out will still look for an exit from fiat. Gurbacs: Bitcoin will appeal to bail out losers Rather than as a short-term investment, people without stimulus checks will value Bitcoin more for its store-of-value properties and permissionless nature. “Those that didn’t get stimulus checks or corporate bailouts are the most likely to buy #Bitcoin for …

Crypto- and blockchain-focused companies around the world have been making efforts to support people amid the coronavirus pandemic, with some of them donating funds to nonprofits and providing supplies to hospitals. Israeli blockchain startup Orbs came up with an idea to encourage people to self-quarantine by using a newly launched app. The app, which is dubbed "Stay at Home Challenge," is designed to assure that the user does not leave the nearby radius once they enter their location in the app. The app tracks users' self-quarantine time and notifies them when they abandon the designated home area, according to an …

An April 21 report by malware lab Emsisoft showed that there was a significant drop in the number of successful ransomware attacks on the US public sector during Q1 2020. The findings show a total of 89 organizations were victims of ransomware in the first quarter of the year. And as the COVID-19 crisis deepened, successful attacks fell even lower, to levels "not seen in several years." Government entities were attacked less frequently, with those numbers going down from 19 in January to just seven in March. The same was mostly true for education: ten successful attacks in January, 14 …

The U.S government recently unleashed a $2 trillion stimulus package to help Americans offset the economic impact of COVID-19. That figure is more than double the amount of all the speculative capital locked up in the entire cryptocurrency market during its 2018 peak. Cryptocurrency at large — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and everything else — collectively reached its all-time market cap high in January 2018, totaling $831 billion according to CoinMarketCap data. The U.S. stimulus bill in response to coronavirus is 240% larger by comparison. Righting the economic ship Over the last two months, the U.S. government evaluated a number of …

BitMEX, one of the world’s biggest crypto derivatives exchanges, is still struggling to recover from a major market sell-off that followed the Black Thursday crash in March. According to an April 21 report by crypto analytics firm Coin Metrics, BitMEX has continued losing in both open interest and volume for Bitcoin (BTC) futures since last month’s historic market crash. At the same time, Binance’s Bitcoin futures trading arm, Binance Futures, has been increasingly gaining momentum, the report said. This data comes from Coin Metrics’ 47th “State of the Network” report, devoted to understanding the impact of the Black Thursday on …

British researchers are trialing a new blockchain-based certificate designed to manage COVID-19 risks across supply chains. In a statement on April 21, Professor Nassim Belbaly, director of Birmingham City Business School, noted that “coronavirus represents a crisis of trust because we cannot any longer automatically trust goods or suppliers.” New, secure and automated solutions are therefore being sought to help reassure consumers and suppliers that goods across the value chain do not pose health risks to themselves or to others. To tackle this post-pandemic landscape, a newly-launched “4th Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies Centre” is trialing a blockchain-based Coronavirus Clearance Certificate …