Runway Fund — an emergency relief fund assembled by the co-founders of OnChain Capital to help startups impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic — has been “overwhelmed” by the number of applications. Cointelegraph spoke to Ran Neuner, host of CNBC Africa’s Crypto Trader and co-founder of both OnChain Capital and Runway Fund, to find out more about the project's plans to assist struggling start-ups. The fund is open to applications from startups in all jurisdictions and has received 400 submissions from startups worldwide in only two weeks. Neuner states that the fund has received “more requests than we ever could have …

On April 5, Italy’s “blood donation day,” the Italian Red Cross constructed an advanced medical post using funds generated through a crypto fundraiser. The Italian Red Cross has raised nearly $32,000 through cryptocurrency donations in less than one month. Roughly $22,000 has been used to finance the construction of the initiative’s first advanced medical post in the town of Castel Gandolfo near Rome. The funds were spent by the initiative to purchase a pneumatic tent that will house the medical post, in addition to other materials. The tent was erected during Italy’s "blood donation day" and used as a screening …

OK Group, the conglomerate formerly behind cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, is investing approximately 10 million RMB ($1.4 million) into Yun Qu Technologies, a blockchain startup based in Wuhan. The announcement was made on April 8 on China’s state news network, Xinhuanet. Yun Qu is headquartered in Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The investment was being discussed since late 2019, according to OK Group spokesmen. As the city begins to return to normal life, OK Group’s investment will help Wuhan’s local businesses recover from the pandemic and the associated quarantine. Yun Qu Technologies provides a variety of information services …

The crypto community is rallying around the charge to fight COVID-19, with a variety of initiatives raising money to fight the pandemic and support charities on the front lines of the battle. The most recent: an online poker tournament, open to anyone and featuring a host of well-known crypto faces. The Giving Block has partnered with a number of high-profile cryptocurrency and blockchain firms to promote #CryptoCOVID19, a campaign to raise $100K — which kicked off with a matching pledge of $50k each from Vitalik Buterin and Gitcoin for all donations made in ETH or DAI on the Gitcoin platform. …

In the latest episode of Beer & Bitcoin, Cointelegraph’s YouTube hosts Jackson and Giovanni were joined by Cointelegraph editor-in-chief Jay Cassano and managing editor Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr. They are in quarantine in New York City and Padova, Italy, respectively. But we’re not inclined to let quarantine hold us down. With some beers on hand, it’s easy to get into an engaged crypto discussion. This time the conversation focused on the economic fallout of Black Thursday, Binance’s acquisition of CoinMarketCap, and the near-emergency shutdown of DeFi giant MakerDAO. Check out the full video and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube …

Twitter CEO and Square founder Jack Dorsey has started a new fund called Start Small LLC, aimed at fighting COVID-19. He’s seeding the fund with $1 billion, roughly 28% of his wealth. He shared the news via Twitter: Source: Twitter The fund’s efforts will initially focus fighting the global pandemic currently dominating the news cycle, but will eventually switch to providing money for girl’s health, education and universal basic income (UBI) initiatives. Dorsey is really putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to taking action to improve the world: “I believe they represent the best long-term solutions …

Blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts have found new ways to come together amid the global coronavirus lockdown. A crypto conference called BlockDown 2020 is scheduled to take place in the virtual realm this month, with big name personalities from the blockchain community set to appear as digital 3D avatars. Notable attendees on the docket include Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb, and NEO founder Da Hongfei. Also appearing will be Roger Ver, executive chairman of Bitcoin.com, and Erik Voorhees, CEO and founder of Shapeshift. Musician-turned-crypto-innovator Akon will headline the event. The American-Senegalese chart-topper recently released the whitepaper …

Amid the global pandemic crisis, the importance of ensuring trusted information is getting more crucial as fake coronavirus news poses a direct threat to life and health of people worldwide. While some global jurisdictions are imposing fines and imprisonment for spreading false coronavirus information, a major news agency in Italy is hoping to stop fake news by implementing blockchain technology. All the news that’s fit to hash ANSA, Italy’s main news agency and an international publication owned by 24 national newspapers, has launched a news tracking system based on blockchain to bring more trust between the company and its readers. …

The coronavirus pandemic has been changing the global economy, our lifestyle, our ways of interacting with each other and our vision of the future. The Cointelegraph team keeps working from home offices, and all the events we planned to participate in have been canceled. But there is still a lot that is happening in the crypto and blockchain field that needs to be covered, so the work keeps us occupied, and that helps us keep our spirits up. The impact of the quarantines and economic restrictions is felt throughout all of the places where we are based, waking up fears …

If the current COVID-19 pandemic has exemplified one thing, it is that our individual actions have consequences for all of us. Unfortunately, human nature propels the majority of humankind to put its individual interests first, and it takes a truly severe crisis to open our eyes to the interconnectedness of our actions. It is through assessment of real-life stress tests that the blockchain industry’s collective immune system develops the necessary resilience, and this is of the utmost importance, as the world’s total unpreparedness for the COVID-19 threat clearly showed. The unprecedented meltdown of prices across crypto assets caused by the …

Publicly-listed Canadian mining and blockchain infrastructure firm Bitfarms is temporarily reducing staff, citing the economic and social toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. In an update published on April 6, the company revealed it had succeeded in maintaining an average daily hashrate of approximately 750 PH since March 19 by optimizing its operations in order to maximize its computing power. This, according to Bitfarms, has meant that the firm has managed “to generate positive cash flow in [...] difficult times,” noting the chaos in traditional and cryptocurrency markets. Yet the company also revealed another component to maintaining its viability during the …

Global computing conglomerate Microsoft is notifying hospitals that are vulnerable to ransomware attacks to help prevent healthcare institutions from becoming overwhelmed amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm also published recommendations to hospitals for securing their systems and preventing ransomware attacks on April 1. Through the company’s network of threat intelligence analysts, Microsoft states that it “identified several dozens of hospitals” with vulnerable virtual private networks and other public-facing gateway applications in their systems: “During this time of crisis, as organizations have moved to a remote workforce, ransomware operators have found a practical target: network devices like gateway and virtual private …