Blockchain technology, itself, can be a main player in supporting the battle against these pandemics: 

• by tracking those infected -  both Acoer and The Public Health Blockchain Consortium are monitoring the continual and anonymous verification of communities and workplaces that are free from coronavirus COVID-19;

• in the carrying out of research and clinical trials - provides the ability to anonymise data thus keeping personal information confidential (pharmaceutical firms and governments need trends);

• by tracking donations and how funds are spent- e.g. Hyperchain in China;

• by way of tracing and tracking the quality control measures required for medical supplies e.g. Modum.io AG offers access to the temperature records of pharmaceutical products during their transportation in order that necessary compliance temperature requirements can be verified. Also, VeChain tracks the authenticity of medical masks together with the supply/production of them.

However, there are challenges to using Blockchain technology:

• Regulatory – if a public blockchain is used potentially no party is responsible or can be held accountable for the data on the blockchain. Therefore; it would not be possible to delete data thus potentially breaching GDPR regulations and the right to be forgotten; 

• Data privacy - as potentially people’s movements would be tracked to ascertain with whom they have been in contact;

• Patient engagement - safeguarding issues in the case of the young, old or those with limited mental capacity;

• Interoperability of data - there is a lack of standards and regulations between different systems/Blockchains;

• Scalability and speed -this could well prove to be a challenge given the huge amount of data involved.

Guardtime, is a company which uses a blockchain-based platform to secure over 1 million patient records in Estonia and is cited as an example of the use of blockchain for the management of electronic medical records (EMR). Another such example is the MedRec project, a project of MIT Media Lab and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. It is a blockchain system that ‘prioritizes patient agency’, giving a transparent and accessible view of medical history. The Gem Health Network (GHN) is yet another example, which is developed by the US start up, Gem, using the Ethereum blockchain platform. GHN allows different healthcare practitioners to have shared access to the same data. Healthbank, a Swiss digital health company, is similarly working on empowering patients to be in full control of their data using blockchain platform. In a systemic review on blockchain technology in healhcare from 2019 the author includes in his research the Medicalchain project, whose blockchain-based platform will be designed to facilitate the sharing of patients’ medical records across international healthcare institutions, as well as the Healthcoin initiative which aims at constructing a global EMR system. Other players involved in the research paper working on different initiatives and projects based on blockchain-enabled patient-centric EMR included Factom, HealthCombix, Patientory, SimplyVital, IBM’s Watson, BurstIQ, Bowhead, QBRICS and Nuco.

Zoonotic diseases, themselves, are very common, both in Asia and the United States, and around the world. Scientists estimate that more than 6 out of every 10 known infectious diseases in people can be spread from animals. Because of this, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) works 24/7 to protect people from zoonotic diseases, not just in the United States, but around the world.

Zoonotic – diseases that spread from animals to humans

Source: https//www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/zoonotic-diseases.html

The past two decades have seen three major highly pathogenic zoonotic outbreaks of beta coronaviruses. The first was Severe Acute Respiratory SyndCoronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2002, which infected over 8,000 people and killed 800. This was followed in 2012 by Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, MERS-CoV in 2012, a difficult to transmit but highly lethal virus, with 2,294 cases as of 2019, and 35% mortality. The third is SARS-CoV-2 (causing the current global pandemic) and resulting in the severe respiratory disease Covid-19. It was first reported in China in late December 2019 and consequently triggered an epidemic that rapidly spread across the globe becoming a pandemic of devastating impact - unparalleled in our lifetime. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center are both institutions providing up to date reporting the on current Covid-19 situation globally, at present with over 4.9 million confirmed cases and over 323,000 deaths.

However, notwithstanding of all this, there is seemingly the potential for a ‘trade-off’ between security and privacy – always a debatable issue when dealing with personal and medical data. The engagement of technology is no doubt increasingly highlighting the need for society to decide how this trade-off is to be reconciled.

There have been 18.3 million BTCs mined so far with the intention that a total of 21 million BTC will be finally created by 8th October 2140. The theory is that by reducing the number of Bitcoin tokens being created this will counter the impact of inflationary pressures. Thus, every 210,000 ‘Bitcoin blocks’ (approximately every four years) the number of Bitcoins (BTCs) paid to a miner for a block on the Bitcoin network is halved. Subsequently, the block reward is now reduced from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC, meaning that the amount of new BTCs created each day will fall from 1,800 to 900.Therefore, this will result in a BTC miner’s total income (assuming the current BTC price of $8600) falling from $15 million to $8 million each day. 

Source: ChartBTC

Melem Demirors of CoinShares believes, “That the past two halving’s cannot be compared to the current one because a robust derivatives market has been established. As a result, Bitcoin as an asset is decoupled from the supply-demand economy”.

Time will tell what impact the halving will have on BTCs’ price but it does, once again, remind us of the level of detail that went in to creating Bitcoin in the first place.

Therefore, in very simplistic terms:

Assuming the demand for Bitcoin remains the same, the theory is that by reducing the number of Bitcoins being issued every day the price of Bitcoin, itself, will be supported. Furthermore, by halving the number of Bitcoins given to a miner this means it will ultimately take longer for the maximum number (21 million) of Bitcoins to be reached.

Proposed guidelines:

• Companies issuing an EquiBond are required to have at least 1 year’s audited accounts ensuring that a third party has reviewed the company’s financial position. This means that EquiBond investors will also avoid 20% of those businesses which become insolvent within 12 months of being established;

• The maximum that can be raised is €8 million - same as current crowdfunding limits;

• The maximum an investor can invest in a tax year into EquiBonds is £20,000 - same as the annual ISA allowance;

• An EquiBond can be held in an ISA;

• An investor can invest a maximum of £5,000 p.a. into each EquiBond - so not overly exposed to individual issue;

• The income on an EquiBond is tax free;

• Investors will be subject to full KYC and AML checks, which can be carried out by the exchange where the EquiBond is to be traded on;

• 10% of any monies raised from an EquiBond issue is to be paid to the National Lottery - so helping good causes and ensure that there is governance and independency as to the beneficiaries;

• The total costs of issuing an EquiBond cannot exceed 5%. Therefore, including the 10% given to the National Lottery, investors are assured that 85% of the capital raised will be deployed into the company in which they are investing;

• Money raised from an EquiBond is treated as capital so not taxable for the company receiving the capital;

• Initially the EquiBond pays 10% of its revenue to investors above a pre-agreed level of company turnover. Once the initial capital invested is repaid, the share of revenue reduces to no more that 2% of the company’s Earnings Before Interest Tax Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA);

• The income generated from a share of a company’s revenue is calculated based on the number of days the investor has owned the EquiBond - and can be paid as frequently as monthly;

• The company wishing to raise capital has to have at least one non-executive director on its board; 

• The directors need to have professional indemnity insurance (PI) in place as this will mean a third party (i.e. the firm offering insurance) has reviewed the company in order to agree to offer PI;

• To issue an EquiBond, a company must produce a mini prospectus with any stated facts and claims fully verified.