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Cyprus University Accepts Bitcoin For Tuition Fee Payments
An anonymous reader writes "The University of Nicosia has begun accepting bitcoins as payment for its courses, as well as launching a Master of Science degree focusing on digital currencies. The announcement is part of a proposal set up by the university to develop the Mediterranean island into a hub for bitcoin trading, processing and banking, as use of the virtual currency continues to gain traction." Warning: Auto-playing ad, with sound.
It was good advice at the time. The chances of it being so successful were rather slim.
Wow. They are now even warning us of their own slashvertisements. What has this site become...
The jury is still out on long term viability. BTC is just barely starting to make the transition from tech elite plaything to something a wider audience finds utility in. There is a lot of hype and a lot of fiat money being poured into BTC right now, but telling if something is ramping up or a bubble is difficult. After all, tulips were a great investment too, till they crashed. On the other hand, things like credit cards, where people were skeptical that they would ever be mainstream and anything other then a passing fad have found a permeant and profitable place in the economy.
So still too soon to tell.
Yes, although at that rate $10 invested back then would be over $200,000 today. I sure wish I'd put $10 into it.
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You'd have to say BTC are a lot more like tulips than credit cards. Credit cards are not really a good with constrained supply that a market can put a price on.
Stolen credit cards, on the other hand...
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Normally I'd respond with snark about tulips and CROX, but Cyprus is a financial post-apocalyptic wasteland where neither the people nor the institutions trust the kleftes, the bankers and the Russians who now run the smoldering remains of the bank. Plus, Cyprus has been in corralito since the meltdown, which effectively means the Cypriot Euro is worth less than the EU Euro, since the two are not functionally interchangeable across the capital control lines. In Cyprus, Bitcoins actually make sense for all parties to a transaction, because nothing else is safe (Cyprus even lost its gold during the meltdown).
Well, that is the free market at work.
Seriously when will people recognise it's just a ponzi scheme and not a real currency. It's not real because you can't buy things with it (TFA must be a lie because I know bitcoin is not a real currency). I can't pay my taxes with it, just like Euros, and frankly they even sound fake. And it's not recognised by any governments. I don't trust the recent article about the US government and bitcoin because governments lie.
It's not a real currency!!!
Please can we see an end to the "it's not a real currency" posts. It's money and you can buy stuff with it. The end.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you like your lying troll, you can keep your lying troll.
Medical providers are not required to accept any particular insurance if they don't want to. Most do, out of the desire to help their customers (because, as you've so nicely illustrated, the customers expect it now), but there's no regulation I know of that requires it.
If your particular insurance isn't accepted by the hospital, you're still responsible for paying the bill, and the insurance company is still responsible for covering the cost, but it's just more difficult now. The patient has to make the claim to the insurer, and the insurer eventually writes a big check to the patient. The patient then pays the hospital.
You know... the way it's always been.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
what if it starts going the other way and you invested 200 dollars in it and now it is only worth 10 dollars?
i dont know about you but i want any alternative currency to be more stable
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Tuition costs this semester will be BTC 9.8738100476. ... well, I'm sure by tomorrow morning the value of a bitcoin will have stabilized, so we'll post the final tuition rate then.
Wait, make that BTC 5.6820973827.
Wait no, make that BTC 3.8260399174.
Ahh wait, it's BTC 24.84028975894.
My current health plan my employer doesn't offer isn't accepted at 2 of the 3 closest hospitals to my home. There are 2 major health networks in town and many insurance companies partner with one or the other but not both. It has been this way for as long as long as I've had insurance with 3 different employers myself, as well as when I was under my parents plan as a dependent. Welcome to insurance.
It's not extremely surprising that "one of the world's largest and most respected cancer hospitals" wouldn't be on on the in-network list for exchange plans. "largest" and "most respected" usually comes with "most expensive" and "least willing to negotiate on pricing".
Yeah, they share some traits with both of the examples, which I guess makes sense since they are both a system AND the tokens the system uses.
One thing that will be interesting to see play out is how well the original tuning scales. BTC depends on both the idea that the market will auto-adjust AND the scaling built in to the original design will be appropriate. In a way it is 'big design up front' and the hope that natural forces will do the corrections from there. If BTC does survive long term it will be interesting to compare its stability to fiat currencies and see how much value there really is in the explicit adjustments that states periodically make.
If you can't buy things with it as you say, then why can you use it to pay for goods and service? The Silk Road was obviously conducting transactions with it. A variety of small business online retailers conduct transactions with it. Numerous online services such as usenet, VPN, hosting, etc use bitcoins as a payment option. And now a university accepts payment with them.
It may not be an official currency, but neither is gold, silver, stocks, or any other item that has value and can be exchanged.
Real currency is also a ponzi scheme. Pick which one you want (or neither).
$200 is less than most electronic gadgets and those will certainly depreciate to $10 in a few years. It may not be the most prudent investment but if you have the cash lying around it's a fun bet with far better odds than the lottery.
The point is that such prognostications turned out to be wrong. Don't get me wrong, I think bitcoins are stupid, but that doesn't make them lacking monetary value to other people.
How about 20,000 merchants including a bunch of subways around the world that accept Bitcoin. Ok it's a not a "real" currency from your definition because no government approved it. Fine, it's a public ledger where only the owner can change it's own value and can't be shut down or manipulated by anybody.
"The obvious path is humble, safe but pays the wages of a cook, not a champion." -Jade Empire
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The Cypriot economy has been in the shitter for a while, Not to the same extent as their neighbours in Greece, but worse than most other European countries. They had to be bailed out by the EU earlier this year, and their banks are still in a period of reorganization.
It's not surprising that their university accepts bitcoins. They are probably happy to have an injection of any currency at all, regardless of whether it is universally recognized as such.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cyprus
This is a "close cover before striking" diploma mill in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Taking BitCoin is just out of a desire to avoid the costs of getting money into/out of Cyprus which is in serious trouble. Looking at their website though proves that it's all Greek to me...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Given how unstable this "currency" has been in the recent past, how can anyone set price points without needing hourly updates to make sure they get a consistent payment?
Right now it's valued at $730, 2 weeks ago it was $200 and a few months ago it crashed.
You cannot run a business with currencies this volatile.
MABASPLOOM!
Working with BTC in mining I haven't become convinced that BTC itself is going to be the long next "next thing" in currency, but it has convinced me that something like it will come along. Maybe a cryptocurrency that has origins that mimic more the creation of the internet itself.
However, something like this is on the way. I think decoupling governments from the ability to print currency as they want would be incredibly positive. Even though that's how we as humans have set up monitory currency in the past there is no reason why we need to keep it. It's the people as a whole that give currency its worth, not the government. If the people of the world as a whole decided tomorrow that the USD was worth nothing it would be gone. It's people giving bitcoin its value no governments and I think that's the lesson to learn here.
$200 isn't that much in the scheme of things. I mean yeah it's a month's worth of a family cellphone plan, or a modest food budget, but for investors not so much. If I'd been more forward-looking when I was a student, I would have put at least 20 bucks in, which would have set me back about two hours of work or a nice dinner.
Crimey
However chances of it being so successfull and chances of "it going up from 20ish cents".....
I mean at the time, there was no way to predict it would gain so much interest, but I was pretty confident that it was a good buy at that price....even if it only ever hit $.50 it was doubling your money so it was easy to see it was a great buy then.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Neither is a ponzi scheme:
Wikipedia: "A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation."
This is what Madoff did exactly. He got new investors, skimmed money, and paid off other investors to make it look like money was being earned.
Bitcoin (or any national currency) doesn't fit the definition in any way. If you want to argue that Bitcoin is a scam then do it with facts, but arguing that it's a "ponzi" scheme is an attempt to scare with loaded words and it's a fallacy.
It's not a currency if "government" is essential to your definition, true, but maybe that definition is changing.
Yes, although at that rate $10 invested back then would be over $200,000 today. I sure wish I'd put $10 into it.
That can also be said about stocks/shares in thousands of companies.
The fact is, it's a lottery. Always has been, always will be.
No sig today...
Well, keep in mind, civilization has been down the government-less currency trail before, so that is not exactly unexplored territory. One thing that remains to be seen is how many of the problems that resulted in the creation of state currencies will be problems for BTC, or if the abundance of state currencies already in operation are enough to mitigate it.
'Viable' is a relative term. There are plenty of toy systems that are viable on the small scale that do not handle broader adoption or moving outside their niche very well.
There is also the question of will BTC settle at all? One of the classic problems with commodity backed currencies (which BTC behaves like) is that they are notoriously unstable and thus unattractive for long term planning.
Neither a "profit earned" or "subsequent investors" even exists. You're twisting words in a *big* way.
Isn't the point of currency just to be a sophisticated form of barter? So, it serves the same purpose as currency.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
To add on to my statement above, if someone excepts what you say then EVERY market is a Ponzi scheme. The $480 is not coming from another investor in the same scheme as was with Madoff, it comes from a price that a bitcoin market set. Plus the "investor" is doing business with the 3rd party. Madoff took money from other parties and gave them to original investors without them knowing where the money came from.
If I buy a rare comic book for $10 and sell it for $50 to a 3rd party later have I engaged in a Ponzi scheme? The only difference between what is happening is we are talking about BTC and not comic books.
In both cases the original person to issue the item doesn't matter. In Madoff's case it's central to the matter.
Sorry to feed a troll, but that's not what the topic here was.
+1000 informative
No sig today...
There is an obvious difference between investing $200 and investing $10 - one is the price of a few cups of coffee, the other a grocery bill for a month.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Except that you cannot send your old iPad through the computer to another person on the other side of the planet within 10 minutes. That is what gives Bitcoin it's value.
Shirts for milibitcoins at cryptoanarchy.com
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cyprus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cyprus != http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Nicosia
No, it's not. It was a free market until ACA. Now it's a semi-planned market. When it was a free market, these people were covered.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Please can we see an end to the "it's not a real currency" posts. It's money and you can buy stuff with it. The end.
Heh. You waited too long for the punchline... Just about everyone started foaming before they got to the end.
Not everyone missed the bus, though. :golf clap:
The "University of Cyprus" it's a small university in the small island of Cyprus (that is Greek actually - both the island and the university!).
Most professors in that university are Greeks from the mainland, the rest are -Greek- Cypriots, but most -Greek- Cypriots study in Greece or England anyway so...
That bitcoin joke -it's a joke!- was an idea of the economy profesor in that university as a way to advertise that university to the Middle-Easterns of the neighborhood that desire a western education (by the way, that university offers classes in the English language and cooperates with some English universities) and don't want or can't have it in England (or Greece) - so don't take it seriously!
Greetings from Greece...
s/Democrat/politician
If that's how you think probability works I would love to play poker with you.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It's a bad currency, and there are dubious investment schemes (not explicitly Ponzi) involving it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
To me, the difference is how widely it's useful. My mom's cat isn't currency, because there's maybe 3 people in the world who would want it, and 2 are probably staving people in Africa. The dirty green paper in my wallet IS currency because I can take it anywhere and exchange it for food, gas, drugs, and tech. Bitcoins are somewhere in between.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Not really. The ACA changed a lot of fiddly regulatory details, but did not turn it into any more of a planned market then it already was.
Every year plans change, people loose coverage and have to get new plans. Most of the time these details are hidden behind HR since they do a lot of the leg work, but insurance companies are constantly creating and removing plans, switching which hospital systems they are linked to and which they are not.
And now the market is doing what it always does. The rules have changed, insurance companies are adjusting their offerings to get the most value for their share holders and least value possible for their customers. Hospitals are deciding which insurance carriers they will play ball with and which they will not allow. Same as it has been for decades, it is just getting more attention now since it has a high profile political element that can be blamed for what is essentially SOP.
> It was good advice at the time.
Actually, no it wasn't. Good advice would have been: Use your brain. Research Bitcoin until you understand how it works, what it is and what it isn't. Then, decide if it is workable and worthy. If it is, decide how much you are willing to risk investing in it. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose. Note that this is good advice for any new technology.
This is what I did early in 2011. At first I was like most people: "That can't possibly work." But I researched and I found it could and DID work. And I wanted it to succeed, so I did whatever I could to help it (which included investing in it).
When I finally figured out what it was all about I got a weird feeling. I can best describe the feeling as "This Is Important". I got the same feeling when I first found out about the Internet.
the problems that resulted in the creation of state currencies
You mean, the problem that private currencies make it harder for politicians and bankers to steal from everyone?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
That still doesn't make it a currency.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
It's not changing anywhere of any consequence. It's still mostly nerds, libertarians, and criminals that like it. When the average guy on the street has even heard of bitcoin, then we have something to talk about.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
The point of currency is to act as a neutral form of barter. Bitcoin doesn't really fit that category because it's not neutral in that it's value is only to a select group of individuals. Outside of that, it's utterly worthless.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
First, you don’t invest in $200 electronic gadgets, you consume $200 worth of electronic gadgets. Unless you in business, in which case you would expect those electronic gadgets to earn more than $200 over those 2 years.
Second, in response to TacoBill, when you start hearing people saying that you should invest in a investment because it is going to go up because more people are buying it – instead of its intrinsic worth, that is a classic signal that one is in bubble territory.
So, because it's possible to pay for parking in a few places with conkers, you think conkers are a currency?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24162228
( Conkers are the seeds of the horse chestnut tree. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers )
Bitcoin (or any national currency) doesn't fit the definition in any way. If you want to argue that Bitcoin is a scam then do it with facts, but arguing that it's a "ponzi" scheme is an attempt to scare with loaded words and it's a fallacy.
Of course it does. The high "value" ($600 ish) of a bitcoin is completely a product of new people getting sucked into the scam. Once there are no suckers left who want to buy into bitcoins, the price will fall, leading people to try to flee, and within the space of a day or two the value has completely disappeared.
It's a Ponzi scheme. And those who have bought into the idea will only realise it when it's over.
Ok you win, so unless it's adopted by everywhere it's not a currency... how do you think an alternate currency can start without government forcing to use it? I guess your answer it... only government issue currency are "real" currency. Fine I would accept that but soon or later you will realized that bitcoin has a lots of advantages. Right now I can send $10 000 in China for 5 and it's instant... try that with your "real" currency... it will take days and cost you over $100.
To add on to my statement above, if someone excepts what you say then EVERY market is a Ponzi scheme.
No it's only a Ponzi scheme when it relies on new-comers to generate the "profits". As bitcoin does.
For example a market in a blue chip company stock is not a Ponzi scheme, as a share isn't just a trading token. It carries the real value of a fractional ownership of the company, it's assets and potential profits.
So, because it's possible to pay for parking in a few places with conkers, you think conkers are a currency?
You can buy a lot more than parking places with BitCoins. I am not fairly convinced that unless bitcoin is adopted unilaterally by every country, people will still declare it as "not a currency".
Conkers are...
I'm English. I used to play conkers at school.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It's still mostly nerds, libertarians, and criminals that like it.
I don't think most nerds like it either. I'd change those 3 categories to two.
1) Libertarian nerds.
2) Criminals.
For sure other nerds are interested in how it works. But that doesn't mean they have any interest in using them.
I'm English. I used to play conkers at school.
Good for you. But lots of people here aren't English and come from countries that don't have conkers, or at least don't call them that.
You can buy a lot more than parking places with BitCoins.
So what's the boundary? How many things do you have to be able to buy with conkers before they are currency?
As you are English, you may recall the problems of using leaves as currency as described in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe".
Will it ultimately settle on being valued at approximately the amount of energy required to compute it, or something else?
I would think not. For one thing, if you could only get out of it what it cost to compute it, then nobody would compute it (outside of the people who are really pursuing it for philosophical reasons. Believe me, those people do exist). Further, at some point, all of the bitcoins will be mined, and then there will be no reason for it to stabilize on.
I think right now the value of it is somewhat tied to how many people are desiring to use it. There are only so many of them. At some point, if adoption became more universal, and the bitcoins had all been mined, then it should be slightly deflationary, as long as the world economy kept expanding. At least that is the theory. It should be the index against which inflation is measured.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
So what's the boundary? How many things do you have to be able to buy with conkers before they are currency?
What is the boundary indeed. Very good question but since you're the one making assertions about the existence of a boundary and what is one side of it then how about you define it. Here's some trite defintions which don't work:
"Can pay my taxes in X". If that's true then US dollars aren't currency since I can't pay my taxes in them.
"must be backd by a government". Because that worked so well for Zimbabwe dollars.
Can't buy $RANDOM_ITEM in bitcoins. Try looking round for someonw who will sell it. I can't buy $RANDOM_ITEM in pesos without finding someone to sell it, but pesos are still a currency.
etc.
you may recall the problems of using leaves as currency as described in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe".
Leaves aren't scarce and there are an awful lot of them. Conkers are much scarser which is why they worked for this one off scheme. Bitcoins are very scarse.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The difference with stocks is: they represent control of the means of production (at least, stocks in company with an actual product or service in the market). There's something real underneath a stock share.
Actually, as bitcoin starts to gain acceptance it becomes less of a lottery as well. Currency speculation is just gambling, but a small amount of savings in any stable currency can be wise. It will be interesting to see whether bitcoin stabilizes soon - it's still all over the place even compared with gold, which is notoriously speculator-driven in the short term.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Very good question but since you're the one making assertions about the existence of a boundary and what is one side of it then how about you define it.
Not so. You said: "You can buy a lot more than parking places with BitCoins." which has the implication that there are a certain number or perhaps certain specific things that you can buy with bitcoins that separates it from conkers. That makes it a currency when conkers are not. That's the boundary condition, and it was implicit in what you said, though not defined. So what is that boundary?
It was good advice at the time. The chances of it being so successful were rather slim.
Maybe, but we aren't talking about pure randomness or pure ignorance of facts here. The fact that most people had no insight into the matter doesn't make it automatically unpredictable. We still don't know how things will turn out about this sort of currency eventually, but I'm pretty sure that it will look very predictable "in hindsight". In other words, whoever had the correct assumptions in the first place had the right insight, and it wasn't random. I guess this applies to all sorts of unprecedented technology or social movement.
The above doesn't apply to me personally though, I supported Bitcoin because I'm an anarchist, and I suppose, a Kantian. Investment minded people apparently thought it was a good bet, because the result seems binary, that is, it will either catch on and gain massive value or fail. Then it's not a difficult choice. Even after it gained some value, you could still use the same reasoning because the probability for its utter failure got lower.
No, private currencies did not make that more difficult, nor did commodity based trading.. They were, however, unstable and tended to retard economic growth.
Obama Says He’ll Defend Constitution
Did he happen to mention the constitution of a particular country? Or was he referring to defending the "constitution" as in "the embodied compositional elements" of the present government?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
That's a genuinely interesting solution, although not a technological one.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
So every company on the stock market is a Ponzi scheme too? Interest bearing accounts are a Ponzi scheme?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Not so. You said: "You can buy a lot more than parking places with BitCoins." which has the implication that there are a certain number or perhaps certain specific things that you can buy with bitcoins that separates it from conkers. That makes it a currency when conkers are not. That's the boundary condition, and it was implicit in what you said, though not defined. So what is that boundary?
indeed, but you said:
So, because it's possible to pay for parking in a few places with conkers, you think conkers are a currency?
Clearly implying that merely being able to buy a very limited range of things is not sufficient to qualify as a currency.
So, what do *you* think the boundary is? Or do you think a currency is something other than something with which you buy stuff?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
From wikipedia:
"A currency (from Middle English curraunt, meaning in circulation) in the most specific use of the word refers to money in any form when in actual use or circulation, as a medium of exchange, especially circulating paper money. This use is synonymous with banknotes, or (sometimes) with banknotes plus coins, meaning the physical tokens used for money by a government.[1][2]
A much more general use of the word currency is anything that is used in any circumstances, as a medium of exchange. In this use, "currency" is a synonym for the concept of money.[3]"
Seems to meet the definition for me, under the second paragraph.
Read it more carefully. Bitcoin isn't actually tied to physical money in any way.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
The point of currency is to solve the "Coincidence of Wants" problem of barter. In pure barter, you have to find someone to trade with who both wants what you have to trade, and has what you want to get. Currency introduces a generally accepted intermediary. You trade away what you have, which for most people is their labor time, for currency. Then later you trade your currency for stuff you want. By separating the halves of a barter transaction, you make it easier for trades to happen, because you only have to satisfy one condition at a time.
Anything that people generally accept as an intermediary can function as a currency. Historically, that included cattle, precious metal, cowrie shells, and lots of other things. Address balances on the Block Chain (the public bitcoin transaction ledger) are just another intermediary. The various technical features are what make one intermediary preferred over another in a given situation.
Depends. Does whoever you're paying to then use the conkers to pay for other things? If yes, then yes, they are being used as a currency (physical tokens representing abstracted value, to be exact).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I think they plant them. Money trees?
indeed, but you said:
So, because it's possible to pay for parking in a few places with conkers, you think conkers are a currency?
Sure. But you answered that, and it's your answer that made me wonder that the boundary is.
Or do you think a currency is something other than something with which you buy stuff?
I think a currency is something with which you can buy anything or pay your taxes, within it's country of issue. And which is listed on FOREX or at Bureaux de change so you can do the same in other countries.
Something which you can merely trade for an official currency, such as for example precious metals, is not a currency. It's a commodity. Bitcoin looks like a virtual commodity. One which is likely to become valueless when the newcomers stop coming, like any Ponzi scheme.
I've posted a (torrent of a) 6 month archive of tweets about bitcoin at bitcoinscope.com
To be precise, it's 50% of all tweets (every other tweet), so it can be used as a training set, with the other 50% to be used as a test set later (for your sentiment tracker / price predictor, etc.)
And they still are.
Cyprus itself is a good example for that. They became Europe's capital of financial fancies, gambling and speculation and they got utterly fucked in the arse in such a way that nobody is giving a shit for them, the EU even refused to bail them out like we did with Spain, Greece, the European banks etc. :P
If they are as successful with Bitcoins as with the real currencies chances are they will have to sell to the Chinese and their bodies for medical experiments
-- 29A the number of the Beast
A bank printing it's own banknotes? Oh, yes, yes, Awesome idea, the teabagging version of me is already masturbating to it and suffering from a religious rapture, oh, ohhhh, it's p-r-i-v-a-t-e, omg, omg,OMG!!!!
Oh... wait: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1819
hmmm....
Well, I think I'm going back to coffee and leave the tea resting in it's bag for some time
-- 29A the number of the Beast