{"id":4855,"date":"2014-04-29T08:46:10","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T12:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wncen.com\/?p=4855"},"modified":"2020-10-07T11:38:16","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T11:38:16","slug":"mits-bitcoin-project-will-distribute-100-bitcoin-undergraduate-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wncen.com\/news\/mits-bitcoin-project-will-distribute-100-bitcoin-undergraduate-student\/","title":{"rendered":"MIT’s BTC Project Will Distribute $100 in BTC to Each Undergrad"},"content":{"rendered":"
MIT is getting serious about bitcoin. Or at least two students at the prestigious school are.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Rubin (who studies computer science) and\u00a0Dan Elitzer (President of the MIT bitcoin club) have managed to raise a whopping half-million dollars in order to distribute bitcoins to every undergraduate student at the school.<\/p>\n
In all, each student will get about $100 worth of bitcoin — a significant amount — in what is being called an “ambitious project aimed at creating an ecosystem for digital currencies at MIT”,<\/p>\n
“Giving students access to cryptocurrencies is analogous to providing them with internet access at the dawn of the internet era,” said Mr. Rubin.<\/p>\n
“We decided to announce this project now to give students lead time. We want to issue a challenge to some of the brightest technical minds of a generation: \u2018When you step onto campus this fall, all of your classmates are going to have access to bitcoin; what are YOU going to build to give them interesting ways to use it?” said Elitzer.<\/p>\n
A majority of the funding for the project came from MIT alumni, with another chunk coming from the bitcoin community.<\/p>\n
And while Rubin and Elitzer have no idea how students will use their bitcoin, the idea is to get them familiarized with the digital currency.<\/p>\n
Plans include holding workshops with well-known entities in the bitcoin space such as Gavin Andresen (chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation) and Sean Neville (CTO at Circle Internet Financial).<\/p>\n
At a school that is known for consistently\u00a0innovating in the tech-sphere, the move could be great long-term for bitcoin.<\/p>\n