Listen in:
What Moved Global Markets
Coronavirus update:
– Global cases cross 925,300
– Global deaths: At least 46,100
– US cases: At least 213,300
- Confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surpassed 200,000 Wednesday, doubling since Friday. World Health Organization officials are “deeply concerned” about the “rapid escalation and global spread” of the coronavirus outbreak, saying global infections will eclipse 1 million with 50,000 deaths in a few days.
- European markets have posted their worst quarter since 2002, and US Stocks sank on Wednesday as Wall Street kicked off the second quarter on a sour note thanks to persistent concerns over the spread of the novel coronavirus.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 1,100 points lower, or 5%. The S&P 500 slid 5% while the Nasdaq Composite lost 4.9%. The major averages hit their session lows.
- The sharp economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic will be followed by a rebound — but it will take around two years for British and eurozone gross domestic product (GDP) to get back to recent levels, according to economists.
- The IMF said that global policymakers must enact “wartime” measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic, and the “war” phase of the pandemic will endure “at least” one to two quarters. The success of policy measures from governments will determine how quickly the economy can recover once the spread of the virus is contained, the IMF said.
Crypto Prices (from CoinMarketCap)
Bitcoin: Up 4.42% to $6,622.13
Total trading volume (24h): $41.39+ billion USD
Ethereum: Up 2.72% to $136.38
Total trading volume (24h): $12.92+ billion USD
3 biggest movers 24 hours
Biggest Mover 1: Acute Angle Cloud (AAC) is up 443.34% to $0.021507
Biggest Mover 2: Dentacoin (DCN) is up 180.56% to $0.000025
Biggest Loser: Pepe Cash (PEPECASH) is down 53.38% to $0.001005
What Moved Crypto Markets (i.e. digital assets)
- Coinbase has invested 1.1 million USDC in Uniswap and PoolTogether in an effort to facilitate the two protocols’ growth. The awards were issued through Coinbase’s USDC Bootstrap Fund, which was originally launched in September of last year. With Uniswap, the fund has injected 1 million USDC into the protocol’s USDC/ETH pool. With saving game PoolTogther, Coinbase has invested 100,000 USDC as a spool sponsor to increase USDC depositors’ potential rewards.
- Speaking of its investment in Uniswap, Coinbase noted that the protocol has grown considerably since launch and now has approximately $33 million of liquidity.
- Binance is launching a crypto mining pool. On Tuesday, Russian news outlet Coinlife first reported the exchange’s plan to build a new bitcoin mining pool. The move was later confirmed by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao in a Wednesday tweet. Additionally, Zhao announced that there will be a series of new additions to Binance’s finance product line-up including staking, savings, and loans.
- Finalising the exchanges’ news: the total volume for non-custodial or decentralized exchanges (DEXs) hit an all-time high of $668 million in March. That figure is 53% higher compared to the data from February, the previous all-time high month for volumes.
- A federal judge has denied Telegram’s request to issue its forthcoming gram tokens to non-U.S. investors. The judge wrote on Wednesday that Telegram’s claim it could issue its tokens to investors but ensure these tokens did not end up in U.S. investors’ hands was unconvincing. He rejected a request to clarify his earlier preliminary injunction preventing any gram issuance.
Other Specialties
Fintech: The use of Fintech apps has seen a 72% surge in the past week, as people adapt their lifestyles to cope with limitations on mobility amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the use of cash in the UK dropped by 50% in the days following the UK government announcing the lockdown.
Healthtech: Reuters reports that robots are a huge help for Italian doctors and nurses who care for coronavirus patients. Robots monitor parameters from equipment in the room, relaying them to hospital staff. The robots have touch-screen faces that allow patients to record messages and send them to doctors. “It’s like having another nurse without problems related to infection”.
AI: Development of artificial intelligence agents tends to frequently be measured by their performance in games, but there’s a good reason for that: Games tend to offer a wide proficiency curve, in terms of being relatively simple to grasp the basics, but difficult to master, and they almost always have a built-in scoring system to evaluate performance. DeepMind’s agents have tackled board game Go, as well as real-time strategy video game StarCraft. But the Alphabet company’s most recent feat is Agent57, a learning agent that can beat the average human on each of 57 Atari games with a wide range of difficulty, characteristics and gameplay styles – and this is quite a benchmark for a deep learning agent.
Smart cities: Uber Eats said on Wednesday it is teaming up with French supermarket group Carrefour (CARR.PA) for a new delivery service aimed at helping Parisians buy essential goods and food, and also has similar plans in Spain and Brazil. Berlin-based online marketplace Delivery Hero has also made changes to its operations spanning more than 40 countries to help get groceries to customers.
NexChangeNOW Pick of the Day
Commodity Giants Launch Blockchain Agritech Initiative Covantis