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posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday April 29 2014, @05:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the Crypto-Workstudy dept.

The Boston Globe reports that two MIT students have raised half a million dollars for a project to distribute $100 in bitcoin to every undergraduate student at MIT this fall aimed at creating an ecosystem for digital currencies at MIT. "Right now there is not a geographic place that you can go to and assume that people have relatively broad access to bitcoin," says Daniel Elitzer, suggesting that that could change with their experiment, which might make for an interesting case study. "What might the world look like if bitcoin, or something like bitcoin, were widely accepted?" The bulk of funding for the project is being provided by MIT alumni who plan to distribute the $500,000 already pledged to all 4,528 undergraduates.

Plans for the MIT Bitcoin Project involve a range of activities, including working with professors and researchers across the Institute to study how students use the bitcoin they receive, as well as spurring academic and entrepreneurial activity within the university in the field. "Giving students access to cryptocurrencies is analogous to providing them with internet access at the dawn of the internet era," says Jeremy Rubin, a sophomore studying computer science at MIT. When the distribution happens this fall, it will make the MIT campus the first place in the world where it will be possible to assume widespread access to Bitcoin. "Everybody has access to the Internet, right so you want to launch a webapp? Everybody can do that. You want to launch a bitcoin or cryptocurrency app? That's a little bit harder. You can't test it in your immediate friend group. But hopefully [that's] what we'll enable."
 
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  • (Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday April 29 2014, @06:53PM

    by TK (2760) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @06:53PM (#37791)

    The way I image this playing out is a large percentage of the students that either don't know how or aren't interested in buying things that can be purchased with bitcoins will sell theirs to an entrepreneurial student or group of students at fifty cents on the dollar. That student will proceed to hoard as many bitcoins as possible, cashing out at a profit at some point in the future, and using that money on tuition, books, or more likely, booze and weed.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DECbot on Tuesday April 29 2014, @07:46PM

    by DECbot (832) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @07:46PM (#37809) Journal

    Normally, I would agree with you except that this is MIT and the majority of the students are likely to be very interested in crypto currencies. Of course, you're right that they'd still either hoard it or use it for booze and weed.

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    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 29 2014, @11:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 29 2014, @11:28PM (#37916)

      Bullshit. Only fucking idiots are interested in Bitcoin and I doubt the majority of MIT students are stupid.

  • (Score: 1) by Snow on Tuesday April 29 2014, @07:57PM

    by Snow (1601) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @07:57PM (#37817) Journal

    PUBLIC NOTICE:

    I will buy any amount of bitcoin ($20,000 at a time) for 51 cents on the dollar. Please contact me if interested.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 07 2014, @11:08PM

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