Good news to students looking forward to buying textbooks at MIT Bookstore. MIT now allows the use of Bitcoin to purchase textbooks and other products on sale in any of their stores like T-shirts. This is the first major university to add bitcoin as a payment method in their bookstore and so the move makes MIT stores outstanding in providing students with more payment options.
According to an announcement done on Thursday by MIT COOP president Jerry Murphy, MIT COOP is the first recognized campus-based enterprise to come up with a product that responds to student needs and market demand. This has made the university to be regarded as a cooperative by college students for college students.
The university is serious about promoting this innovation to ensure it picks well among the student fraternity. As a part of that campaign, the university has launched a MIT Bitcoin Club that will give students the opportunity for every undergraduate to earn a gift in form of a free $100 worth of the digital money. Bitcoin would be irrelevant in the school if the students’ fraternity did not embrace bitcoin. This will give every student an opportunity to shop using bitcoin and that can bring more popularity.
MIT Bitcoin Club was co-founded by Jeremy Rubin and Dan Elitzer. Jeremy is an undergraduate of MIT and Dan Elitzer is an MBA student studying at Sloan School of Management Studies. MIT Bitcoin Club aims at facilitating familiarity with the community that one lives in and feed the society with the most recent and relevant new crypto currency. This is a noble idea that if pursued would make the society around us well informed about Bitcoin. Since inception, the two founders have managed to raise $500,000; an amount that has allowed all undergraduate students to get a feel of bitcoin through the gift amount of $100 per undergraduate student that can be saved allowing all students to test the solution.
The founders also placed a prize for groups of students who would develop an app related to bitcoin. This was another way of drawing the student’s interest in bitcoin and also identify student developers who can be part of a bigger bitcoin product should such a need a rise. The prize money each group would win for doing any bitcoin related app was set at $15,000 and this was a real suitor for student developers.
Addressing participants when MIT Bitcoin project was being launched sometimes this year, Rubin stated that giving students the opportunity to access cryptocurrencies is just like offering students internet access at the start of the internet era. Since bitcoin is still a new digital currency, the co-founders agreed to provide understanding to merchants around the campus and use the chance to help the school or college colleagues to access to bitcoin payments.
Mission fulfilled
Since partnering with Bitpay, the COOP is bound to receive superior payment processing services and tools, and is capable of handling daily banking settlements. Students are the next generation of technology gurus and therefore early exposure to technology is a boost towards the right direction.