In a recent Reddit ask-me-anything (AMA) Gregory Bowman, Folding@Home’s (F@H) director, revealed that the project currently has 400,000 computers actively contributing to research. “We had about 30K users before the pandemic started,” he stated, adding: “In the past two weeks, 400K volunteers have joined Folding@home.” The number of F@H donors has increased 1200% in four weeks Folding@Home is a platform that diverts donations of spare computational power toward medical and scientific research. On Feb. 27, F@H announced an initiative to harness a global computer network to contribute work towards pharmaceutical drugs to combat COVID-19. F@H also designates computing power for …

Like other financial markets, crypto investors have seen wild swings and devaluations in recent weeks as Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, issues have hit many people all over the world. With safety concerns paramount, it can be easy to forget for a time about more pedestrian issues like taxes. But taxes won’t go away entirely. The United States Internal Revenue Service’s main tax filing deadline remains as April 15, but there is a 90-day reprieve on payments to the IRS until July 15, according to IRS Notice 2020-17. Does this mean you don’t have to file by April 15? For …

Governments are now considering tracking online user data as a way to fight the rapid spread of COVID-19. As a result, the question of personal data privacy is increasingly becoming a subject of discussion within the crypto community. On March 17, the Washington Post reported that the United States government was in talks with internet giants like Facebook and Google about using smartphone location data to combat COVID-19. One highlighted tactic includes tracking whether people are self-isolating in a way that successfully stems the outbreak, as has already occured in Israel, China, and Iran. In recent years, leaders in the …

Bitcoin (BTC) is now turning the ongoing coronavirus disaster into a cause for gains — the cryptocurrency is up 80% in just one week. As the effects of the pandemic on traditional markets intensify, Bitcoin has appeared to U-turn on its bearish stance. Pal: “Entire system” at risk of loss Data from Coin360 and Cointelegraph Markets showed BTC/USD climbing as high as $6,650 on March 20 — 24-hour gains of over 20%. Versus last week’s lows of around $3,700, the pair has appreciated 79.5%. Bitcoin price 7-day chart. Source: Coin360 While Bitcoin’s reaction to coronavirus has constantly delivered surprises, analysts …

Kelly Loeffler, the former CEO of Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary Bakkt and current Republican senator from Georgia, reportedly sold millions in stock within days of a Senate Health Committee hearing on the novel coronavirus. According to a report from Daily Beast on March 20, the Republican senator reported the first instance of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24 — the same day of the private briefing to United States Senators. Former Bakkt CEO dumps stock after Senate Health Committee hearing In total, she and her husband reportedly executed 27 sales of various stocks throughout February, including …

An apocalyptic account of Goldman Sachs ‘investee call’ went viral on social media faster than the coronavirus — and now the investment bank wants to set the record straight. The story snowballed after first being reported in a Reddit post on March 15. It has since been shared countless times in Telegram and other social media. User ‘nottodaymonk’ posted that his friend had just “got off a Goldman Sachs Investee call where 1500 of their investee companies dialed in”. He listed several “takeaways” from the call, the most significant of which was a prediction of “global health and economic collapse” …

By this point, everyone knows that Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has wreaked havoc on the world economy. The ongoing pandemic On March 13, crypto markets saw an unprecedented collapse alongside the worst day in the traditional markets since 1987. Beyond the markets tanking, the risk of spreading the highly contagious virus has led many countries to tell citizens to stay home — with obvious implications for broader workforce productivity and resulting in the cancellation of many events in the crypto space. Beyond telling businesses to stay closed and people to socially isolate, governments around the world are taking unprecedented …

As the number of global coronavirus cases grows each day, online scammers are turning to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) to steal money under the cover of the global pandemic. According to cybersecurity firm Sophos, some online perpetrators are now impersonating the World Health Organization (WHO) in an attempt to steal cryptocurrency donations to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Scammers look to profit from the recently launched COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund Chester Wisniewski, a cybersecurity expert at Sophos, reported on WHO impersonators in a March 19 tweet, posting email screenshots from scammers. According to Wisniewski, the fraudsters are trying to mislead people …

The Netherlands-based Public Health Blockchain Consortium (PHBC) has announced the release of a blockchain-based system designed to track the movement of individuals not infected with high-risk viruses. The impetus behind the development is to help healthy people avoid potentially life-threatening diseases. The PHBC announced the release on March 19, detailing that the blockchain-based platform will monitor systematic, continual and anonymous verification of communities and workplaces, which are not afflicted by dangerous viruses, including the Coronavirus. Recording virus data on blockchain “The blockchain stores a workplace's or community's protection certificate from security organizations or government bodies to assure that all persons …

As the novel coronavirus crisis continues, a cybersecurity firm has started offering free help to healthcare providers that fall victim to cryptocurrency-demanding ransomware. According to an announcement on March 18, cybersecurity firm Emsisoft partnered with incident response company Coveware to allow free access to ransomware-related services at no cost to healthcare providers. The initiative aims to get the impacted organizations operational in the shortest time possible to reduce the impact on patient care to a minimum. “A perfect storm” According to the firm, ransomware attacks have a seasonal aspect with the number of incidents spiking during the spring and summer …

Peer-to-peer Bitcoin (BTC) trading has surged in Venezuela after shutting banks amid a nationwide quarantine to fight the spread of coronavirus. On March 17, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro brought a country-wide quarantine to slow the spread of COVID-19. With only 33 cases of coronavirus confirmed so far, the administration hopes that the emergency measures will prevent its health system from becoming overwhelmed by a rapid increase in infections. Venezuela’s banking sector shut down indefinitely Venezuela’s national banking system has been halted “indefinitely” as part of the sudden quarantine, sparking an increase in P2P cryptocurrency trading. After a three week skid …

On March 11 at 4:56 p.m. UTC, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of the World Health Organization, stated that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic. Industry experts consider the global uncertainty around this respiratory disease — from travel bans imposed by governments across the globe to the continuing global market turmoil — to be a trigger of the cryptocurrency market’s painful crash. Most cryptocurrencies saw their biggest 24-hour price drops in a single 24-hour period. The strong downward trend started off around 6:00 a.m. UTC on March 12 and continued until the morning of March 13. Ether (ETH) took …