The Coronavirus is having a significant impact on the crypto world as well. The virus from China has forced the city of Wuhan, where it would have originated, into isolation. It is not an ordinary town, but a metropolis of 11 million inhabitants.
In Wuhan and the surrounding cities, the Binance Charity Foundation has sent over 178,000 parcels of medical supplies from several suppliers: masks, gloves, protective suits, disinfectant water, test kits. Overall, the BCF has purchased 470,000 of them waiting to be divided among hospitals and medical teams active in the area.
.@BinanceBCF has bought over 470K pcs of medical supplies from global suppliers, including masks, gloves, protective suits, disinfecting water, testing kits, etc.
With 178K of them delivered directly to 50+ hospitals/medical teams in Wuhan and surrounding cities. more to come… pic.twitter.com/QXd1Naf6JB
— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) February 6, 2020
The TRON Foundation has also launched an appeal to Tron supporters with the aim of collecting medical devices to send to Wuhan: glasses, face masks, food, water and anything else that may be necessary to overcome the emergency. The TRON ecosystem, including BitTorrent, Poloniex, DLive and WINk are already doing their part, but the emergency is vast and needs a larger contribution.
“This is a global priority for us as this epidemic vividly exemplifies that even as interconnected as we are on the internet, we are just as connected in our physical bodies.
We would like to thank the Tronics from around the world, who have already begun to help us fight, isolate, and defeat this virus”.
Coronavirus emergency, mining stops
Due to the lockdown over the past few days, delays had been announced in the delivery of hardware required for cryptocurrency mining.
Specifically, MicroBT, Bitmain and Innosilicon informed their customers that deliveries would be delayed due to the isolation measures taken by the Chinese government.
Coronavirus, stock and crypto market
Since the news of the disease spread, stock markets have been falling, in contrast to the cryptocurrency market which is on the rise, with Bitcoin leading the uptrend. Several leading figures in the industry have tried to correlate the disease and market trends.
For Peter Schiff, the Coronavirus has become an excuse that investors are using to sell. But the motivation might have been different:
Coronavirus is the excuse that investors are using to sell the market. But if it wasn't the coronavirus, they would have found another excuse. https://t.co/rTGJ6MUs1X
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) February 3, 2020
According to Tone Vays, instead, panic in the markets can only be a partial advantage for Bitcoin, because ultimately there is a risk of a real economic crisis.
2/2: Actual Economic Panic is bad for #Bitcoin because if jobs are loss & econ activity crashes you sell anything valuable. But fear of set panic makes people spend their savings on something that is valuable in the future, so as long as there is fear of pandemic $BTC should rise
— Tone Vays (@ToneVays) January 28, 2020
Even the illustrious Financial Times has suggested that the Coronavirus is an advantage for Bitcoin. This is not really the case, as explained by Federico Izzi, trader, analyst and contributor for The Cryptonomist.
“Looking at the charts a correlation seems obvious, but the Bitcoin rise is emerging and is further confirmed in these hours, to the point that tonight it reached $9,800, consolidating an ongoing bullish trend. Whereas last week’s movement coincided with the tensions in the world’s international stock exchanges because, in case of hesitation, investors look for safe-haven assets, in fact even gold has experienced a rise that confirms the strong correlation with Bitcoin.
Last week the Chinese stock markets were closed due to the festivities of the lunar new year. Volumes increased in the crypto sector in conjunction with this closure. Speculators and investors were in need of open markets, and they poured into the alternative crypto sector.
The US stock exchanges these days are recovering from last week’s downturns and during the night they recovered their absolute historical highs, the European ones also recovered: if there was a correlation with the rise of the stock exchanges, Bitcoin would have had to go down, but tonight it has actually risen to new period highs.
In the short term, this correlation could perhaps be there, but the facts are showing that there was a chain of events that contributed to the rise of Bitcoin, which confirms itself as an asset in its own right, correlated to the movement of gold”.
