It’s just the kind of event that these sequestered, hunkered-down times call for. With COVID-19 still wreaking havoc on any plans to get more than ten people in a room together, Virtual Blockchain Week is a weeklong conference taking place completely online, and it just so happens that Cointelegraph is the primary media partner for the event. Virtual Blockchain Week attendees simply tune into the appropriate webcast to participate. The agenda kicks off the evening of April 26 and features a full lineup of huge blockchain names giving presentations and participating in fireside chats the entire following week. Because of …

It’s April Fool’s day somewhere, or at least in CoinMarketCap’s neck of the woods, as the cryptocurrency data site saw massive volumes for new “Toilet Paper Token.” A website known for listing cryptocurrencies in order of market cap value, CoinMarketCap, listed Toilet Paper Token (TPT) as number “0” atop its list on March 31, showing a circulating supply of “out of stock.” Although it’s still March 31 in some parts of the world, the annual day of pranks has already reached parts of the Asia-Pacific. Source: CoinMarketCap.com Bringing a bit of light-heartedness during tough times April Fool’s day 2020 comes …

Although the Wild West of crypto historically has involved scams, hype and price gaming, those descriptors are now tacked onto another industry — the N95 face mask market. “Scrutiny surrounding these deals is high because of ongoing scams and claims of price-gouging, both of which are triggering emotionally charged reactions and fear of making deals,” Forbes contributor David DiSalvo wrote in a March 30 article on the coronavirus pandemic-induced N95 face mask mania. Out of context, however, DiSalvo’s quote very much describes the crypto space at times. The face mask market currently resembles horse-trading shenanigans DiSalvo described a day that …

The Bitcoin (BTC) network hash rate took a steep dive on March 26, dropping by a whopping 15.95%, which is a 45% sink from its peak highs of 2020. The hash rate dipped from 136.2 quintillion hashes per second on March 1 to just 75.7 EH/s on March 26, according to data from Blockchain.com. Analytics website Coin Dance reported similar findings, with the 2020 peak standing at about 150 EH/s on March 5 and then dropping to 105.6 EH/s 10 days later, thus showing a 29% decrease. The combined effects of the hash rate decrease and the ensuing outflow of …

After facing multiple delays, the adoption of Russia’s major cryptocurrency law will be postponed again, now due to the coronavirus. Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, says that the country’s crypto law — the bill “On Digital Financial Assets” — is now finalized but won’t be adopted before the end of the spring 2020. Russian authorities have been arguing about crypto regulation since January 2018 According to a March 31 report by Russian news agency RBC, Aksakov has admitted that previous delays in the bill’s adoption were caused by disagreement on the new asset …

Blockchain development firm Bitfury is re-assigning the computing power it uses for digital currency transaction processing to COVID-19 research. In an announcement on March 31, the company revealed that it had been allocating its high-powered GPU-enabled computing nodes to run COVID-19 calculations as of March 20. The redirection of Bitfury’s resources is contributing to a distributed computing endeavor, Folding@Home (F@H), created by a consortium of scientific research labs across North America, Europe and Asia. In the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, F@H has launched a project to run simulations of the virus’ molecular structure in an effort to contribute …

Crypto communities and the United States Internal Revenue Service haven’t exactly had a love fest over the last five years. It started in 2014, when the IRS said crypto was property, and it hasn’t got much better since. In addition to sending those 10,000 “beware” letters and trying to get crypto exchanges to turn over customer lists, the IRS has even gone so far as to alter the most hallowed tax form, Form 1040, to ask a crypto-specific question. However, the IRS is actually making a big effort to cut all taxpayers — and that includes the crypto community too …

The COVID-19 crisis may have put a stop to millions of sports events, work conferences and meet-ups across the world, but it has not halted those in the cryptocurrency space. The Coinfest Conference, which runs until April 4, has found a way to defy the coronavirus lockdown by setting up shop in the digital blockchain realm of Decentraland. The first day of the virtual conference kicked off on March 30th, beginning with a round of games that offered users the chance to win MANA tokens — one of Decentraland’s native currencies. Nearby museums and art galleries (seen below) offer visitors …

Bitcoin (BTC) has in total suffered just 10% from the coronavirus outbreak which obliterated stocks and caused the United States to print $6 trillion. That was according to the latest quarterly price data from monitoring resource Skew.com on March 31, which showed that for Q1 2020, BTC/USD is only down by around 10.7%. Bitcoin streets ahead of macro assets in 2020 At press time, the pair remained higher after seeking new support at $6,500 on Monday. At those levels, the pair is just $700 lower than its position at the start of 2020, and $3,800 beneath its current year-to-date all-time …

Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency mining firm, Riot Blockchain, filed its Form 10-K annual report to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), March 25. Among a long list of other potential risk factors to the business, the report assesses the potential disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 will affect cryptocurrency mining business As part of the Form 10-K a company must include information about any significant risks to its business. Riot further subdivides these risks into several sections, although interestingly lists the risks from COVID-19 as a cryptocurrency-related risk, rather than a general risk: “Our business will be adversely impacted …

JPMorgan Chase, the first American bank to create and successfully test a digital coin representing a fiat currency, also provided the most fossil fuel financing out of any bank in the world, according to a 2019 report titled “Banking on Climate Change.” The bank recently joined a chorus of other financial institutions and endowments that have declared that they will, going forward, be reluctant to provide funding to the fossil fuel industry — which energizes emerging digital technologies and companies — in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. In a hard-hitting report released to clients on the same …

The operators of Ryuk ransomware continue to target hospitals, despite the intense pressures they are already facing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. On March 27, ‘PeterM’ of British IT security firm Sophos, tweeted that a United States-based healthcare provider had been targeted by Ryuk’s ransomware. PeterM stated that the cyber offensive “looks like a typical Ryuk attack,” posting: “I can confirm that #Ryuk ransomware are still targeting hospitals despite the global pandemic. I'm looking at a US health care provider at the moment who were targeted overnight. Any HC providers reading this, if you have a TrickBot infection …