This is an opinion editorial by Korok Ray, an associate professor at the Mays Business School of Texas A&M University and Director of the Mays Innovation Research Center.
Since the announcement of its inception in October 2008, Bitcoin has reached a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. Its growth has drawn both retail and institutional investment, as the financial community now begins to see it as a legitimate store of value and an alternative to traditional assets like gold. Innovations in second-layer settlements like the Lightning Network make it increasingly possible for bitcoin to serve as a medium of exchange.
Yet, Bitcoin has a precarious and somewhat checkered history in academia. Curricula in universities are largely devoid of any mention of Bitcoin. Instead, the teachings are often left to student clubs and nonprofits. Over time this may change, as Bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency market continues to grow, attracting attention from top talent in both engineering and business. Bitcoin’s absence from university is not a problem with Bitcoin itself, but rather the academy, with its insufficient embrace of innovation, its emphasis on backward-looking data analysis and its excessive preoccupation with individual disciplines rather than collective knowledge. Bitcoin can serve as an inspiration for what academic research can and should be. In fact, it presents a roadmap to change higher education for the better.
Similarities With The Academy
One may wonder why anyone should even assume a relationship between Bitcoin and universities. Technologists are in constant contact with real needs of customers today, while faculty develop basic science that (may) have application far into the future. After all, innovations like Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and even Ethereum were launched by young men who didn’t graduate from college. Yet, it’s no accident Silicon Valley and Route 128 both emerged in proximity to our nation’s greatest coastal universities….
