Cryptocurrency Classes Are Coming To Campus (nytimes.com)

While the price of Bitcoin has dropped since Christmas, the virtual currency boom has shown no signs of cooling off in the more august precincts of America's elite universities. The New York Times: Several top schools have added or are rushing to add classes about Bitcoin and the record-keeping technology that it introduced, known as the blockchain. Graduate-level classes this semester at Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Duke, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland, among other places, illustrate the fascination with the technology across several academic fields, and the assumption that it will outlast the current speculative price bubble. "There was some gentle ribbing from my colleagues when I began giving talks on Bitcoin," said David Yermack, a business and law professor at New York University who offered one of the first for-credit courses on the topic back in 2014. "But within a few months, I was being invited to Basel to talk with central bankers, and the joking from my colleagues stopped after that." For a class this semester, Mr. Yermack originally booked a lecture hall that could fit 180 students, but he had to move the course to the largest lecture hall at N.Y.U. when enrollment kept going up. He now has 225 people signed up for the class.

Comments

Re:Classes?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

It seems likely on the order of tomorrow's sunrise that educating the public about the Bitcoin would certainly not lead to more folks purchasing it.

Even if they are educated, folks still will speculate in Bitcoins anyway. It's like gambling, alcohol, tobacco and opiates. People like to mess with stuff that they know is bad for them.

I can understand why there is high interest in Blockchain among students. Even if it is riddled with scams right now, Blockchain skills are good to have when applying for your first job. That and Automation and AI.

Bitcoin is going to run its course, and a lot of folks are going to make a lot of money from idiots during that run. Hell, even Beanie Babies made money for folks . . . for a while.