10 CommentsAn innovative project promoted by two students who have managed to raise half a million dollars is going to offer $100 in Bitcoin to every undergraduate at MIT, the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The revolutionary initiative will target over 4,500 students in order to establish “an ecosystem for digital currencies” at the university located in Cambridge. Besides “creating” thousands of new Bitcoiners, the action will allow professors and researchers to analyze how students use cryptocurrency.
The young minds behind the ambitious idea – now called the MIT Bitcoin Project – are Jeremy Rubin, a sophomore studying computer science, and Dan Elitzer, a first-year graduate student in MIT’s Sloan business school and president of the MIT Bitcoin Club, revealed an official announcement released by the club.
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 this burgeoning field.
Most of the donations gathered by the duo came from alumni. The plan is to distribute the digital money during the fall, but until then the project includes an educational campaign. “Giving students access to cryptocurrencies is analogous to providing them with Internet access at the dawn of the Internet era”, said Rubin.
Some of the money will fund other aspects of the project, including related “infrastructure” and informational activities. The first one will be a Bitcoin-related exhibition scheduled for this Saturday, May 3rd, an event that intends to inform merchants about cryptocurrency-friendly sale systems.
“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: ‘When 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?'”, Elitzer explained, quoted by the official statement.
The students have already announced they have the support of most of the faculty members and staff, as well as people outside of the MIT community.
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