Over the past few months, news of the coronavirus-caused illness COVID-19 has spread around the world. Unsurprisingly, it has affected crypto and the broader tech industry due to how widespread the illness has become.
Coronavirus Affects Crypto Events; Tron Conference Latest to Fall
While COVID-19 began in China, the illness has rapidly spread around the world, strongly gripping three foreign countries thus far: South Korea, Italy, and Iran.
South Korea now has over 3,000 confirmed cases of the illness, many of which relate to attendees of a certain church that some have said practice questionable sanitary practices, especially in these trying times.
Cases in the Asian nation continue to flood in by the hundreds each day, signaling to some that COVID-19 is on the verge of exponential growth in South Korea.
As a result, niTROn, the Tron-themed crypto event put on by Justin Sun’s Tron Foundation, has just revealed to have been “postponed”:
“We are very sorry to inform you that #niTROn2020 will be postponed due to the ongoing #coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan, China. The safety and health of our community and the wider public is our top priority. The new date will be decided based on the ongoing situation.”
The event organizers are offering refunds to those that purchased tickets or an alternate choice, which includes upgrades: “free upgrade to VIP for ordinary ticket holders,” amongst other upgrades.
Tron has been keeping a close eye on the coronavirus situation for a while now, with the Foundation earlier this year claiming to have sent health supplies like masks to the region of Huibei and the city of Wuhan, where the epidemic began in China and has since spread from.
niTROn, whose keynote speaker in 2019 was the late Kobe Bryant, isn’t the only crypto event to have been affected by the outbreak.
In a notice published earlier this month, the organizers of Hong Kong Blockchain Week and Token2049, which occur around the same time, noted that the events have been postponed until later this year. This is unfortunate, as this writer found Token2049 2019 quite enjoyable.
Not the Only Effect
The coronavirus outbreak has been affecting the cryptocurrency and blockchain space in other ways.
Over the past few weeks, even as BTC’s price has shot higher from the $6,400 December bottom, the hash rate of the Bitcoin network has stagnated around 110 exahashes per second.
This suggests the coronavirus is slowing the efforts of Bitcoin miners to expand their operations; indeed, Jiang Zhuoer of BTC.Top revealed that the police had shut down his Bitcoin mine due to the coronavirus.
Photo by Mika on Unsplash
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