Bitcoin (BTC) has leapt from chat rooms and code repos into graduate syllabi. At the University of the Cumberlands (UC), college students lately accomplished the eight-week course “Bitcoin: Fundamentals, Technology, and Applications.”
This graduate course grappled with Rothbard’s financial concept, Mises’ critiques and expertise overviews from traditional Bitcoin works. It requested not whether or not Bitcoin issues however how a lot it issues — and the way it reshapes cash, markets and administration.
The concept for the course was imagined at the tip of 2024, as Bitcoin was approaching new all-time highs (ATH). UC, which has levels that includes blockchain expertise, noticed a chance to broaden its electives past these specialised applications. Working with the course improvement crew, the administration authorized the providing with a transparent mission: to advertise monetary literacy and floor college students in Bitcoin’s fundamentals.
Here’s how the course was taught — from studying listing to grading construction — and important classes realized for future iterations.
How to show Bitcoin 101
The course design compelled college students to confront Bitcoin not as a speculative asset however as a technological and financial phenomenon with historic roots and future purposes.
To perceive Bitcoin, the course first targeting the cypherpunks and their influences over the a long time main as much as the Bitcoin Genesis Block and past. The works of Chaum, May, Finney, Hughes, Szabo and others helped to show that governmental overreach, privateness infringements and particular person liberty had been influential ideas within the pre-Bitcoin period and on Bitcoin boards.
Many of those individuals created the primary iterations and makes an attempt at a contemporary digital foreign money:
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David Chaum’s DigiCash in 1989
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Douglas Jackson’s E-Gold in 1996
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Adam Back’s Hashcash concept in 1997
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Nick Szabo’s Bit Gold
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Wei Dai’s B-money in 1998
All introduced items of the Bitcoin puzzle, like proof-of-work, pseudonymity and consensus algorithms.
From Rothbard to Bitcoin
One of the influences of the cypherpunks and early Bitcoiners was Murray Rothbard, an economics professor and prolific author. He wrote an ideal ebook that walks by the problems with the fiat system, referred to as “What Has Government Done to Our Money?”
Working by the fundamentals of central banking, debasement and the eras of government-controlled cash, college students might see how cypherpunks had been motivated to create a foreign money that might organically be accepted by society that didn’t have the pitfalls of fiat-backed foreign money.
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Rothbard produced this work within the Seventies, lengthy earlier than the Bitcoin white paper. But he grapples with basic questions, like what properties of cash matter and why solely society can resolve what counts as cash. This makes the ebook a wonderful springboard into the dialogue about Bitcoin as a substitute for the issues of fiat.
The code for the curriculum
Due to the various background of the scholars, being too technical was a difficulty when introducing Bitcoin, because the course is simply eight weeks lengthy. Being too deep within the weeds might alienate an MBA scholar, whereas not explaining sufficient of the pc science behind Bitcoin might result in college students not understanding how it’s an precise resolution.
For this, Yan Pritzker’s ebook “Inventing Bitcoin” provided the right resolution. It explains how the historical past of the pre-Bitcoin cryptocurrency makes an attempt failed, what every dropped at the pc science desk and, finally, how every influenced Bitcoin’s creation.
Pairing this with articles from cryptomedia retailers like Cointelegraph, different works from authors resembling Saifedean Ammous (“The Bitcoin Standard”), Andreas Antonopoulos (“Mastering Bitcoin”) and Jeff Booth (“The Price of Tomorrow”), college students had been allowed to discover the economics and expertise of the Bitcoin revolution in a non-overwhelming method.
How to evaluate and grade a Bitcoin class
Each week, college students produced graduate-level analysis papers tackling questions that compelled them to bridge concept and apply. One task requested: What had been three of the pre-Bitcoin makes an attempt at digital foreign money, and the way did their failures assist Bitcoin’s design?
Another challenged them to guage whether or not Bitcoin satisfies Mises’ Regression Theorem to qualify as “true cash.” Weekly discussions complemented the writing, drawing out each technical element and the myths which have lengthy haunted the cryptoverse.
The standard objections surfaced: Bitcoin is just for criminals; its carbon footprint will boil the oceans; it’s too risky to be a retailer of worth. By defending or dismantling these claims with information and concept, college students had their comprehension examined whereas revealing the place their intuitions clashed with Bitcoin’s realities.
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One notably placing consequence got here from a capstone paper on Bitcoin’s power utilization. A scholar started from the acquainted critique of Bitcoin as an environmental villain, solely to conclude, after evaluating mining’s footprint to the worldwide monetary system, that Bitcoin consumed far much less power and emitted far fewer emissions than anticipated. That reversal, grounded within the scholar’s personal analysis, underscored how structured tutorial inquiry can reduce by each hype and worry.
Bitcoin course enchancment proposals: What’s subsequent?
Like Bitcoin, the course will study from its earliest iterations and make enhancements. For one, the myths within the frequent media will probably be introduced up in earlier weeks. A mistake made on this first iteration was assuming that solely these already occupied with Bitcoin would take this course. If one of many greatest issues with Bitcoin adoption is educating the general public, overcoming the worry, uncertainty and doubt nonetheless needs to be entrance and heart.
Besides the books talked about above, a lab will probably be added, which walks by every step of a transaction course of in Bitcoin, from initiation to chilly storage. During this journey, each technical side will probably be defined: not solely the “how” of every half within the course of, but in addition “why” it’s there. This lab will probably be a hands-on method of connecting the dots from the pre-Bitcoin cypherpunk philosophy days by at present’s expanse into conventional finance, decentralized finance and past.
Bitcoin and formal graduate training
Adding a course on Bitcoin to the curriculum on the University of the Cumberlands was a pure match. With the solely worldwide accreditation for its Master of Science in Global Business with Blockchain Technology program, UC is at all times seeking to assist college students acquire monetary literacy by sensible topics.
The Bitcoin course is a graduate-level elective, but it could turn into a part of one other program provided on the college. Even if somebody’s curiosity in cryptocurrency is outdoors of “simply Bitcoin,” having a basic understanding of Bitcoin is crucial to being a well-rounded blockchain skilled.
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