Bitcoin Enthusiasts Raise Over $500,000 For MIT Undergrads

Bitcoin enthusiasts Jeremy L. Rubin and Daniel B. Elitzer have raised over $500,000 from 25 different donors, and plan on giving each MIT undergraduate student $100 worth of bitcoin. This movement was made in order to spark innovation within the MIT community.

Bitcoin for MIT Undergrads

Currently, the plan is to give 4,500 MIT students some bitcoins this fall, to help get them acquainted with the digital currency.

Hudson River Trading’s co-founder, Alexander Marcos, donated half of the funds to Rubin and Elitzer’s cause.

Rubin and Elitzer got the go ahead from MIT administrators before orchestrating their plans. An email from an MIT spokesperson stated that he wishes success for the project. More than 10 MIT faculty and staff members support the project.

The announcement of funding MIT undergrads with bitcoin has been made months in advanced in order to allow more businesses to adopt bitcoin. By the time fall rolls around, the students may have more bitcoin buying opportunities. Rubin stated:

“What I’m hoping is that infrastructure gets sufficiently built around MIT that bitcoin actually becomes a useful commodity to have. 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.”

As for Elitzer, he hopes the project will inspire people to do more research into bitcoin. With their experiment, Elitzer feels bitcoin can be linked to a geographical bitcoin enabled location. He stated:

“What might the world look like if bitcoin, or something like bitcoin, were widely accepted?”

In addition, the pair of donors are aware that students may be inclined to sell their bitcoins for cash. Rubin and Elitzer hope students will hold on and use their bitcoins, in turn adding to the growth of the bitcoin community. Rubin also says that:

“I think that MIT should be absolutely the center of the bitcoin universe. As a school that’s a leader in technology and science fields … it’s kind of a shame that we’re not already at this point.”

Bitcoin donations and fundraisers are a fast and easy way to get people behind using bitcoins. By getting free bitcoins, no risks are taken, resulting in a less stressful investment opportunity.

For more bitcoin news, stay tuned to CoinReport.

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