Bitcoin Gaining Traction At Colleges Around The World

The purpose of higher education is to provide students with the tools they need to enter their chosen profession. Real-world skills have long been an emphasis at top schools around the world, and now those skills include an in depth study on cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. As digital currencies gain momentum across the globe, universities are taking notice and

to their syllabuses in order to keep up with the quickly changing fintech landscape.

American Universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University only recently launched bitcoin classes, but others around the world have been offering such courses for years. The University of Cumbria was the first UK university to offer bitcoin courses and the University of Nicosia in Cyprus was one of the first to offer a free bitcoin course in 2013 to any interested parties.

Universities that offer bitcoin studies are creating a major stepping stone for the cryptocurrency as it expands further. Not only do the classes give the best and brightest the tools to solve real-world problems related to digital currencies, but they draw awareness to cryptocurrencies as well. Canadian McGill Univeristy and MIT both offered bitcoin give-aways to students in an effort to give the cryptocurrency more traction on campus. Others like the UK's Imperial College have dedicated research to the expanding field and given students and staff the opportunity to collaborate in order to solve some of the cryptocurrency's pressing issues.

Not only are schools offering their students a chance to learn more about bitcoin, but many are accepting the cryptocurrency as payment for their studies as well. In 2013 the University of Nicosia in Cyprus was the first college in the world to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. The school announced that its students could pay for courses and other fees using the cryptocurrency, and had its first student pay in bitcoin just weeks later.