Crypto News

Loading...

Top Crypto Companies Mobilize to Raise Money to Fight the Coronavirus

https://ift.tt/2WJT1QTCoronavirus

Unfortunately, the past few days have seen the outbreak of COVID-19 rapidly worsen; according to websites tracking the spread of this novel coronavirus, there are now over 480,000 confirmed cases, a majority of which are now located outside of China, with hotspots appearing in the U.S., Italy, Germany, Spain, and effectively the rest of Europe.

With this spread, immense stress has been put on local healthcare workers, with reports indicating that supplies of key items, like respirators for those infected and masks for those tending to the patients, are running low.

As a result, there’s been a mass mobilization of industry — with companies from Apple and Tesla to Dyson (yes, the vacuum company) and Ford making supplies or contributing dollars to stem the spread and to keep our health workers alive. Many have called it the biggest mobilization since the Second World War.

Crypto firms have joined in, too, with a swath of leading industry players announcing charity initiatives over the past few days.

Worsening Coronavirus Outbreak Spurs Binance, Ripple, & Others To React

On March 25th, Binance revealed that it will be launching a social media campaign with the below tweet, telling its followers that it will donate $1 USD (up to $1 million) for each retweet with the accompanying hashtag #CryptoAgainstCOVID, with a bonus of $1 million donated if one million retweets can be hit in a week.

Binance’s charity arm, BCF, is also purportedly matching coronavirus donations paid in crypto.

Ripple has followed suit, revealing on March 25th its “commitment to being part of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic:

We’re starting in our own backyard with $100K donations each to @tippingpoint’s COVID emergency response fund and @siliconvalleycf’s COVID Regional Response Fund.

There’s also been a collective effort from top crypto companies, including Brave, Gemini, The Block, Electric Coin Co., and others, through The Giving Block’s #CryptoCOVID19 campaign.

As this virus continues to spread, there’s likely to be further mobilization by corporations, both in the crypto and out of it, to fight it.

COVID-19 Crypto Scams Called Out by California’s Governor

Although crypto for good amid this crisis, there have been some actors that have been using this technology to their advantage as the coronavirus has spread.

Governor of California Gavin Newsom touched on this in a Tuesday broadcast regarding steps his constituents should be taking amidst the outbreak of COVID-19:

Make sure we’re not being taking advantage of. In this environment, there are extraordinary people and people do extraordinarily bad things, […] the people claiming we need to send a dollar equivalent of Bitcoin in advance to get some materials — questionable activities like that.

Unfortunately, what Newsom is saying is accurate.

Sophos cybersecurity researcher Chester Wisniewski reported on March 19th that there have been scammers “impersonating the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, writing directly to individuals asking for Bitcoin payments to a certain address to help “support WHO’s work to track and understand the spread of the virus.”

There have also been reports of scammers requesting Bitcoin in exchange for a ‘vaccine’ and ‘medical care’ from shady actors who are trying to leverage fear for profit.

Fortunately, cybersecurity firms and experts have been on top of their game in calling out this devious behavior, ensuring that the public is mostly kept safe amid these times of trouble.

The post Top Crypto Companies Mobilize to Raise Money to Fight the Coronavirus appeared first on Blockonomi.



March 26, 2020 at 11:10AM https://blockonomi.com from Blockonomi https://ift.tt/39exq5G
Bitcoin

Comments

Post a Comment