A group of developers have created a controversial cryptocurrency that tracks the spread of the Covid-19 virus and goes up in value as the number of infections goes up and more fatalities are registered as a result.
CoronaCoin (NCOV), a new token built on the Etherium blockchain, was created by a team of programmers and activists on 4Chan, the controversial online forum that gave the world the hacker collective Anonymous, among other things.
The original supply of CoronaCoin was based on the total human population at the time of the token’s inception, 7,604,953,650, but every 48 hours the token is burned to reduce supply according to the official number of coronavirus infections and fatalities. The more people succumb to the virus, the more supply gets burned and the more valuable the remaining tokens become.
“We developed the world’s first blockchain that tracks the spread of the virus based on its token supply. The token supply started at 7.6 billion and is burned every two days to keep up with official WHO statistics,” Sunny Kemp, an admin for CoronaCoin’s Telegram group, told Decrypt. “The benefit of documenting the spread of the virus on the Ethereum blockchain is that it is uncensorable. People behind the great firewall can view the real death statistics by checking our token contract on Etherscan.io.”
While basing a cryptocurrency on the worst health crisis humanity has faced in the last few decades is undoubtedly considered controversial by many people, but the group behind CoronaCoin claim that their main goal is to spread awareness about the coronavirus and raise funds to fight against it. A portion of the funds will be donated to the Red Cross for Covid-19 relief.
“A portion of funds raised will go to charity. This is our goal, to spread awareness and help fight the virus. For example, we are currently in talks with a biochemist who is working to develop drugs to fight the virus. These are the kinds of partnerships we want to build,” Kemp said.
CoronaCoin owners have a different view than its creators, though. As you’ve probably already guessed, some have already suggested artificially inflating the number of coronavirus infections, or even encourage the actual spread of the virus, just to inflate the value of the token.
“So some guy at my work got the flu a couple of days ago and now is in the hospital cuz it developed into pneumonia that is affecting his heart somehow if he dies I suggest we add him to the burn count,” one user wrote on the coin’s official Discord channel.
However, the creators of the CoronaCoin don’t seem too alarmed by the possibility of people artificially inflating the coin’s value.
“It has been brought up before, and we recognize that aspect of the project. We would never advocate for anyone to do such a thing, obviously. It would be morally, and probably legally, wrong. We believe CoronaToken holders are responsible,” PeteWeathers, the admin on CoronaCoin’s Discord channel, said.
To get in on the CoronaCoin game, you’ll need a MetaMask wallet and an account on the Saturn Exchange.