The Tron Foundation is once again mired in controversy over an as yet unverified allegation that it secured a ~$2 million grant from the United States’ federal relief program for small businesses hit by the pandemic downturn. The official WeChat account of a Beijing-based subsidiary, “Tron,” appears to have circulated the claim on May 5: Screenshot of a purported WeChat post from a Beijing-based subsidiary. Source: WeChat The WeChat post claims that the Tron Foundation in the U.S. successfully applied for a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was rolled out by the Small Business Administration (SBA) as …

Over the past week, Cointelegraph has participated in Virtual Blockchain Week — a pandemic-proof crypto conference that invited participants from all over the world to join talks with some of Blockchain’s greatest luminaries. At the start of the week, famed venture capitalist, Tim Draper, doubled down on his prediction that Bitcoin (BTC) will reach $250K per coin by 2023. “That's my prediction. Sticking with it. I'm very confident that that is going to happen.” said Draper, when pressed on the topic. He believes that massive commercial adoption around the world will send Bitcoin’s price into the stratosphere. This gels well …

Speaking at the Virtual Blockchain Week (VBW), Tron founder Justin Sun presented his side of the recent events involving Tron’s "partnership" with Steemit Inc, and the subsequent hard fork that resulted in Hive (HIVE) forking away from Steem (STEEM). During February, it was reported that Justin Sun had acquired Steemit Inc alongside the platform’s founder’s reward of 20% of the total STEEM token supply. In response to the purported acquisition, the Steem community moved to initiate a fork to freeze the reward. Sun rejects the narrative of Tron "acquiring" Steemit Inc At VWB, Sun stated that he does not think …

The price of Hive (HIVE), a hard-fork of Steem (STEEM), has skyrocketed following its listing on Huobi. The listing comes one month after Huobi and Binance mobilized customer funds to vote against the Steem community in favor of an apparent hostile takeover of the network, led by Tron founder and recent owner of Steemit, Justin Sun. However, the exchanges claimed that Sun had misrepresented the nature of the event that they were voting on, and quickly withdrew the votes. Shortly after, Huobi announced it would be distributing HIVE tokens to STEEM holders after the hard fork. Huobi listing sparks HIVE …

Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin lamented what he regards as an example of the “Justin Sun dictatorship,” after the TRON (TRX) founder was implicated in yet another plagiarism controversy. A recent rebranding of the BitTorrent File System (BTFS) was met with outrage by Juan Benet, creator of IPFS — or Interplanetary File System. Benet pointed out similarities between the new BTFS logo and that of IPFS, and alleged that the similarities don’t stop there. He tweeted: “Aaaaaahahaha it’s not enough to fork all our code, rebrand it and lie its theirs; copy paste random chunks of our papers, and defraud their investors …

Major Steem stakeholder Dan Hensley has levied heavy accusations at TRON founder and CEO Justin Sun. According to Hensley’s April 8 writeup, Sun “bribed” his way to the top of the Steem hierarchy with “money, power and users.” As Cointelegraph reported in early March, Steem was the subject of what many supporters deemed a hostile takeover by Justin Sun. Hensley’s latest allegations shed new light on how the TRON founder allegedly influenced prominent Steemians into doing his bidding. A TRON representative declined to comment on this story. In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Hensley described Sun’s intention to circumvent established community …

Tensions between Steem (STEEM) and the Hive (HIVE) community continue to escalate, with Steem executing a soft fork to freeze up to 20 accounts owned by the network’s former witnesses. The frozen accounts hold 17.6 million STEEM, worth approximately $3.2 million and equating to nearly 5% of Steem’s total supply. On April 4, the soft fork was proposed in a Steemit post authored by the new account "softfork2288." In response to the purported “uncertain threat that the leaders and main influencers of [Hive] represented to the Steem Blockchain,” the fork sanctioned roughly “no more than 20 accounts “ that meet …

Poloniex revealed its forthcoming Tron (TRX)-powered initial exchange offering (IEO) platform on April 5. Projects seeking to conduct their offerings on Poloniex’s LaunchBase platform face the stipulation of issuing tokens in exchange for TRX, and will be considered on a “first-come, first-serve” basis. Poloniex announces Tron-powered IEO platform Poloniex asserts that LaunchBase is intended “to help quality blockchain projects grow and further develop their ecosystem,” stating that it will “offer professional advice and guidance” to assist partner projects. In addition to agreeing to raise funds in TRX, partner projects will be subject to “eligibility and screening requirements.” Entities located in …

Over the past few days, the ex-Steem blockchain community has gained an upper hand over Justin Sun and his recently acquired Steemit startup. After blaming Sun for attempting to centralize their network, a substantial part of the original Steem community successfully launched a hard fork called Hive. Steem stakeholders are now actively migrating to the new chain. Its in-house token HIVE, which has been distributed among STEEM holders via an airdrop, is trading for a 20% premium over STEEM on some exchanges. Nonetheless, the network split hasn’t been without incident, as some complaints regarding the airdrop distribution were reported. What …

After successfully forking from the Steem blockchain, Hive (HIVE) secured a listing on Bittrex — where it is trading for a 20% premium over Steem (STEEM). In a blow to Justin Sun, the cryptocurrency market appears to have chosen which chain it believes to be more valuable after Hive forked off from Steem on March 20. HIVE trades for 20% premium over Steem On Bittrex, HIVE is currently trading for $0.193, while STEEM is changing hands for roughly $0.154 on the same platform. HIVE’s 24-volume on Bittrex of $28,500 equates to 60% of Steem’s $49,500. In just a few days, …

The Steem (STEEM) blockchain community continues to oppose Steemit in the wake of the recent “takeover” orchestrated by Justin Sun, the startup’s new owner. On March 18, “a large group of Steem community members” announced its intention to hard fork the Steem blockchain and create a new platform called Hive. The network split that was scheduled for Friday, March 20, successfully took place at around 10.30AM CET, and the market already seems to be reacting to the news, as the price of STEEM token decreased by over 20% to around $0.23 as of press time. Hive is an exact code …

Following weeks of conflict between the Steem (STEEM) community and Justin Sun, the community-led Hive hard fork was successful. On March 20, Hive hard forked the Steem network, airdropping HIVE tokens to STEEM holders 1:1, excluding the founder’s reward. The founder’s reward comprises 20% of the total STEEM supply. The tokens were acquired by Tron’s founder, Justin Sun, when he purchased Steemit Inc — the largest front-end interface for the decentralized blogging platform — on Feb. 14. A quick search through Twitter shows that many content creators are already posting on Hive. Steempeak rebrands to Peakd Many of the Hive …