MIT to Undergrads: “You get bitcoin! And you get bitcoin!”

The undergraduate student body of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will get a taste of bitcoin.

Thanks to two students keen on the cryptocurrency, $500,000 has been funded for a project that will award $100 worth of bitcoin to every undergraduate student in the fall.

Headed by Dan Elitzer, President of the MIT Bitcoin Club, and sophomore Jeremy Rubin, the project is part of a wider initiative researching how students spend the bitcoin they receive.

MIT alumni and bitcoin community members provided the funding, with the plan to get campus merchants up to speed on accepting bitcoin payments.

One of the main goals is to foster the growth of a campus-wide bitcoin economy, and become the first community to offer widespread bitcoin payments.

Not only that, but Elitzer explains, “We want to issue a challenge to some of the brightest technical minds of a generation: ‘When you step onto campus this fall, all of your classmates are going to have access to bitcoin; what are YOU going to build to give them interesting ways to use it?’”

Bitcoin is extremely volatile, with news that companies or countries such as China, banning, accepting, or regulating the cryptocurrency generating movements in price.

Online companies such as Square, and Overstock.com, and a select number of brick-and-mortar merchants are signing up for accepting bitcoin payments thanks to the promise of lower transaction fees and immediate payments.

MIT’s 4,528 undergraduates will soon experience using bitcoin to pay, and could foster a new wave of innovation in the bitcoin space.