Episode 230 - Senators dumping stocks after corona briefing, Steemit devs fork into Hive, and more.

Crypto Basic Podcast: Teaching You The Basics of Bitcoin and the World of Cryptocurrency. CryptoBasic

Welcome to another edition of Crypto Basic News! Our editor is SO busy in quarantine that he forgot to post this episode so you're getting it with a few days of delay. We still love him though. He may or may not be the one writing this description. Anyway, today we're talking about shady senators dumping stocks after a private coronavirus briefing, Steemit developers forking into a new platform called Hive due to Justin Sun's shenanigans, and much more. Oh, and coronavirus. Surprise surprise. Tune in now!

• Rapid Fire
• Global cryptocurrency wallet usage has tripled in the last three years.
• 10 mill in 2016 to 40mil end of 2019.
• Devs Plot Launch of Telegram’s Blockchain Without Company’s Involvement
• So says the TON Community Foundation, a group of more than two dozen software developers and investors, who are now discussing possible ways to launch the Telegram Open Network (TON) without the messaging platform's participation.
• Coinbase Wallet integrates DeFi directly into app. Users will be able to borrow and lend crypto with interest thru the app now.
• Which US cities own the most crypto? Let's hear your guesses.
• Congress Bill Looks to create a digital dollar (B?)
• ANNNNND ITS GONE
• https://www.coindesk.com/digital-dollar-stripped-from-latest-us-coronavirus-relief-bill
• Fed Pledges asset purchases with no limits, Bitcoin and Gold Spike - K
• Federal Reserve said Monday it will launch a barrage of programs to help stimulate the economy
• Unlike previous crisis where there was a commitment to a set amount of balance sheet expansion, this time they are indicating no limits
• The Fed also will be moving for the first time into corporate bonds
• Also a lending program for Main Street businesses ($300 Billion) to support flow of credit
• “The central bank is shifting from being not just the lender of last resort, but now it is the buyer of last resort. Don’t ask how much they will buy, this is truly QE infinity.”
• -Chris Rupkey, chief finacial economist at MUFG Union Bank
• will lower the interest rate on its repo operations to 0% from 0.1%. (The operations are conducted daily to provide banks short-term funding)
• All this backed by Treasury department so Fed doesnt lose money
• bitcoin jumped from $5,860 to $6,628 in an hour, Gold went from from $1,494 to $1,524 over the same time frame.
• Four US Senators caught dumping stocks after a private briefing on Corona Virus - B
• There was a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing on the Corona Virus, and right after that meeting there were 4 Senators that immediately started to sell off positions.
• The names of the senators: Richard Burr, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. , Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga. , James Inhofe, R-Okla
• Richard Burr even had a meeting with some fellow rich people (membership to join this group that he had the meeting with is $500, up to $10k) and said this "There's one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. "It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic."
• Burr's private comments were dire, his public comments made it sound like this was under control.
• So I saw a mention of one of the Senators being married to the Chairman of the NYSE. I was trying to remember where I heard that before. Kelly Loeffler! Holy shit she was the CEO that was in charge of BAKKT.
• Then, Karim remember this bitch wasn't even elected.
• Coronavirus crisis may highlight the overlap between the surveillance state and the cryptocurrency industry. - K
• Israeli tech company NSO Group is working on new product to monitor spread of Corona, with nearly a dozen companies testing the product
• NSO, is best known for selling spyware to Saudi Arabia and other governments
• NSO Group’s surveillance technology has attracted widespread criticism for covertly accessing phones, activating cameras and collecting location data.
• NSO Groups to pranks seem to have significant ties to the crypto industry
• co-founders Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio have invested in the bitcoin startup Simplex
• Eddy Shalev (investor) has invested in the non-custodial wallet startup Portis, the exchange platform eToro and the privacy startup QEDIT.
• Coinbase famously sparked industrywide backlash in 2019
• it acquired Neutrino, founded by three former members of a controversial Italian surveillance vendor called Hacking Team.
• Coinbase said those people would transition out of the company, but no update and they refused to comment when asked.
• So just a reminder that cryptocurrency is just a tech, a tool, not innately a tool of liberation/freedom/etc, could be the opposite too, a tool of surveillance, or control
• Update on some Justin Sun / Steemit Drama - B
• So we talked about Justin trying to take over the Steem blockchain a few weeks ago. It looks like he was actually completely successful.
• Steemit developers quit because of the takeover.
• Justin has been hiding any posts on Steem critical of the new Steem ownership, and downvoting them as, well.
• The Steem community essentially capitulated, and forked into a new platform called Hive.
• Hive is going to be airdropped at 1:1 on Steem accounts.
• However, they bricked the Steemit Inc. coins to the tune of 60M, which is what Justin was able to get control of.
• They are proposing that anyone that switches to Hive and moves their coins loses their stake on Steemit lolol.
• Which is of course what Hive is doing.
• From Crypto Mining to Coronavirus Research - K
• CoreWeave is the largest U.S. miner on the Ethereum blockchain,
• redirecting the processing power of 6,000 specialized computer chips toward research to find a therapy for the coronavirus.
• GPUs will be pointed toward Stanford University's Folding@home program.
• Long standing, use donated processing power to simulate protein folds to try to cure different disieases
• Recently announced specific project to boost coronavirus research
• "Their protein simulations attempt to find potential 'pockets' where existing [U.S. federal agency Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] approved drugs or other known compounds could help inhibit or treat the virus,"
• This addition has essentially double the power of the entire network, GPUs designed to handle repetitive calculations
• According to Venturo, those 6,000 GPUs made up about 0.2 percent of Ethereum's total hashrate, earning roughly 28 ETH per day, worth about $3,600 at press time.
• Tulip.tools founder Johann Tanzer put out a call to action to Tezos bakers (miners) and offered a modest 15 XTZ ($20ish) to the leading contributor to Folding@home
• 20 groups of Tezos miners are now contributing a slice of their hashing power to the cause. (and the pot grew to $600ish with other people donating as well)
• GPUs are flexible, but ASICs really cant participate. More powerful than GPUs, but only at one thing (so we probably wont see a lot of btc mining groups helping)
• FOLDING@HOME UPDATE ON SARS-COV-2
• Shots Fired!
• Wikipedia and Cardano having some issuesCharles Hoskinson, CEO of Cardano, is the latest figure in crypto to assert that Wikipedia is censoring his platform. He made a nearly 10 min video regarding the situation. Accusing Wikipedia to be a community-run free encyclopedia, hostile towards crypto.
• David Gerard, a crypto-hater and Wikipedia editor, says that Cardano is self promoting, and needs to be covered by the mainstream media, not the crypto press.
• Hoskinson said coins like Spankchain can have an article on Wikipedia. Spankchain does not have a Wikipedia page.
• Some Cardano members tried to include a blurb on Ourobouros, the algorithm that powers Cardano.

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