university

Major Latin American University Launches Specialization Featuring Crypto-Related Topics

18/12/2020 by Idelto Editor

One of the biggest and most laureate universities in Latin America approved the launch of a Financial Engineering specialization course, whose modules cover crypto and blockchain-related subjects, marking it a historic landmark across the region’s educational sector.

Mexico’s Biggest University Is Set to Teach Crypto Topics on Brand-New Specialization

According to the official announcement in its monthly bulletin, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) said that the new course would be available for both full-time and part-time students, with a duration of two semesters and four semesters, respectively.

The objective of the course reads as follows:

Graduates will be able to evaluate the profitability of public and private companies, develop financing strategies; design, develop and implement innovative financial instruments and processes; design investment portfolios, measure financial risk, among others.

However, the announcement didn’t provide full details on which subtopics will be dedicated to crypto matters. Still, press reports, citing Eloisa Cadenas, CEO of Mexico-based CryptoFintech, pointed out bitcoin and blockchain technology development as topics discussed within the course.

The UNAM clarified that Financial Engineering is aimed at those who have completed a degree in Engineering, Mathematics, Actuary or graduated from related careers in Physical Mathematical Sciences and Engineering.

The inception of crypto-related topics into the university marks the debut at higher-level educational institutions in Latin America. The course is not a diploma course, as it’s a specialization for those who already earned a degree.

UNAM’s Previous Flirting With Blockchain Topics

But this is not the first time that the Mexico City-based university gives room to blockchain-related topics within their academic curriculum.

On August 20, 2020, the UNAM’s Continuing Education Division of the Faculty of Accounting and Administration offered a diploma course in Financial Technologies, which covered fintech, law, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain topics.

According to Webometrics 2020-2, UNAM is the second-best university in Latin America, behind the University of Sao Paulo. The Mexican university is also known for being the educative institution where all three nation’s Nobel laureates — Alfonso García Robles, Mario Molina, and Octavio Paz — completed their studies.

What are your thoughts on this Mexico’s university announcement? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Israeli University Sues Professor for Zero-Knowledge Proofs Technology

22/04/2019 by Idelto Editor

Israeli University Suing Professor for Zero-Knowledge Proofs Technology

A leading Israeli university is suing one of its own senior staff members for allegedly creating a zero-knowledge proofs technology company based on the intellectual property the professor developed while working for the institution.

Also Read: Will Belarus Be the First Country With Nuclear-Powered Bitcoin Mining?

The Technion Wants a Piece of Starkware

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, a research university established in 1912, has filed a lawsuit in the Haifa District Court against computer science lecturer Prof. Eli Ben-Sasson, claiming that he acted in violation of the institution’s intellectual property regulations. Ben-Sasson is the co-founder and Chief Scientist of the blockchain technology startup Starkware and the Technion now demands from the court the transfer of 50% of all his shares in the company.

Israeli University Sues Professor for Zero-Knowledge Proofs Technology — The Israeli national flag next to that of the Technion

The university claims that the professor tried to keep it in the dark about the establishment of the company and that he did not ask for the Technion’s approval for the commercialization of the intellectual property that belongs to the institution. Ben-Sasson’s defense denies these accusations, saying that Starkware did not use or intend to use an invention belonging to the Technion and that the university therefore has no right to his shares. However, they have offered to give the Technion a certain share of ownership in the company, dependent upon reaching a compromise agreement in the near future.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs Technology Worth Millions

Starkware promises to improve the scalability and privacy of blockchains using STARK technology, providing zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs that are “post-quantum secure” with no need for a trusted setup. Besides Ben-Sasson, the company’s other co-founders are Prof. Alessandro Chiesa (UC Berkeley), Uri Kolodny, and Michael Riabzev (Ben-Sasson’s doctoral student at the Technion).

In May 2018, Starkware had announced it had completed a $6 million seed funding round with participation from Vitalik Buterin, Zcash Co., Arthur Breitman (Tezos), Da Hongfei (NEO), Bitmain, Elad Gil, Fred Ehrsam, Linda Xie, Pantera, Naval Ravikant, Metastable, Floodgate, Polychain and others. By October it closed a $30 million equity round, led by Paradigm with investors such as Intel Capital, Sequoia, Atomico, DCVC, Wing, Consensys, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Collaborative Fund, Scalar Capital and Semantic Ventures. In July of that same year the startup also reportedly got a $6.7 million grant from the Ethereum Foundation.

What do you think about this lawsuit? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Top Business School in India to Offer Advanced Blockchain Program for Professionals

27/02/2019 by Idelto Editor

A top business school in India is set to offer an advanced blockchain program for professionals. It marks the latest case of global academic institutions trying to answer the demand from students and industry for more education on crypto assets.

Also Read: University of Michigan Endowment Backs Crypto VC Fund

Indian Institute of Management Calcutta to Teach Crypto

The Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM Calcutta), a top ranked public business school in Kolkata, West Bengal, plans to start a new cryptocurrency-related education program in May 2019. The Advanced Programme in Fintech and Financial Blockchain (APFFB) is meant to address the giant country’s talent shortage facing the financial technology industry. The program is designed for middle and senior management professionals in organizations that need to develop a digital finance strategy.

“A vast majority of firms in the banking and financial sector believe that the lack of adequate FinTech talent is an existential threat to their future. Our FinTech programme, designed with today’s management and finance professionals in mind, will leverage the deep research and consulting expertise of IIM Calcutta faculty and our state-of-art Finance Lab. We plan to equip and enable 2000 Fintech professionals in the next few years,” the program’s director, Prof. Indranil Bose, explained to Indian media.

Advanced Classes on Crypto Assets and Tokens

According to the school’s website, the duration of the program will be six months and it will cost students about Rs. 3,20,000 ($4,500). Course content will include classes on Data Analysis and Interpretation, Financial Markets and Products, Understanding Banks and other Financial Institutions, Foundations of Fintech, Digital Payments, All About Blockchain, Digital Disruptions in Financial Services, Crypto Assets and Tokens, Risk Management for Fintech, and Data Driven Financial Analytics.

Academic institutions all over the world have already been offering classes on cryptocurrencies and related technologies for a couple of years now. This month Shanghai’s Fudan University launched a blockchain R&D center and in January the University of California, Berkeley formed a new blockchain-focused startup accelerator program for its students.

What do you think about this business school offering a program on crypto assets? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Digital Currency Donors and Crypto-Backed Endowments Fuel Higher Learning

23/02/2019 by Idelto Editor

Digital asset holders and organizations have been donating funds to a number of well-known universities. These days a slew of popular colleges like Stanford, MIT, Cornell, Puget Sound, and Princeton all accept digital currency donations or have high-net-worth crypto backers funding these schools. On the flip side of higher education, many of the world’s prestigious universities also offer elective courses that teach blockchain technology.

Also Read: University of Michigan Endowment Backs Crypto Venture Capital Fund

Universities See an Increasing Trend of Cryptocurrency Donors

One growing trend has been the way in which the digital currency ecosystem is fueling education through cryptocurrency donations and backers. For instance, during the first week of January 2019, entrepreneur Mike Novogratz donated some of his cryptocurrency profits to Princeton’s Bridge Year Program. The initiative allows students to get sponsored by schools so they can live and study abroad for nine months in areas like China, Bolivia, Senegal, Indonesia, and India. The CEO of Galaxy Digital is a member of Princeton’s class of 1987 who earned a degree in economics.

“Proud to put some of our crypto winnings (2017) to a good cause. A year living in a different culture can change your life for the better. Build bridges, not walls,” Novogratz told his 114,000 followers on Twitter.

Then there’s the list of Stanford’s corporate donors who help fund the school’s engineering section. Stanford’s endowed faculty chairs and fellowship organizations include the Ethereum Foundation, Vechain, and Omisego. During the first week of 2019, Holberton School in New Haven received $10,000 worth of BTC from the Scroll Network’s founder Nathan Pitruzzello. Back in November 2017, the Echolink Foundation donated $50,000 worth of BTC to UC Berkeley. In 2014, the co-founder and vice chairman of Blockchain, Nicolas Cary, donated $10,000 to the University of Puget Sound. Cary’s donation of 14.5 BTC used Bitpay to facilitate the transfer, which would be worth $58,000 today, but the gift was turned into fiat immediately.

The Largest Endowment Funds in Higher Education Are Investing in the Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

Furthermore, universities with huge financial endowments are hedging with cryptocurrency funds as well. Last May, sources familiar with the matter explained that Ivy League school Yale had invested in the cryptocurrency fund Paradigm. Yale’s endowment is the second-largest in higher education and Paradigm is backed by Pantera Capital’s Charles Noyes and Coinbase cofounder Fred Ehrsam. Moreover, on Feb. 21, public documents revealed that the endowment of the University of Michigan has backed a cryptocurrency investment fund supervised by Andreessen Horowitz. Yale and the University of Michigan are not the only endowments investing in cryptocurrency related ventures, as MIT, Stanford and Harvard are knee-deep in digital asset funds as well.

42 Percent of the Globe’s Top 50 Universities Offer Crypto Courses

Tech publication The Information’s research report says that many Ivy League schools are invested in at least one or more crypto related investments. Moreover, a great majority of the universities that have endowments invested in digital assets or have received digital asset donations offer cryptocurrency-related courses. Most of these schools also provide students with academic credits for courses on smart contracts and blockchains. Both the Holberton School in New Haven and Boston’s MIT offer students graduate certificates that are processed using the BTC chain.

Because of the level of innovation involved, higher education and crypto technology go hand-in-hand, and trends over the last few years have shown how they share a symbiotic relationship. This has led to 42 percent of the globe’s top 50 universities offering at least one accredited course that teaches blockchain-related research. A Coinbase research study details that because schools are offering these lessons, students are becoming interested in learning about the digital currency ecosystem. For instance, the report explains that David Yermack, the finance department chair at New York University Stern School of Business, created a blockchain course in 2014 and 35 students registered for the lesson, which is a few less people than many of the school’s traditional electives. The study reveals that by the spring of 2018, Stern had to move the class to the largest auditorium because students registering for the course spiked to 230.

What do you think about school endowments getting involved with cryptocurrency funds and backers donating large sums of digital assets to universities? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Stanford, Coinbase Reports, Twitter, and Pixabay.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH, and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

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South Korean Business School Launches Crypto MBA Program

23/12/2018 by Idelto Editor

A major business school in South Korea is now offering a master’s degree in cryptocurrency. Crypto MBA is a one-and-a-half-year program that covers topics such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contracts, crypto funds, Dapp planning, game theory, and how to write persuasive whitepapers. Meanwhile, the government is working on follow-up crypto regulations.

Also read: Indian Supreme Court Moves Crypto Hearing, Community Calls for Positive Regulations

Crypto MBA

Seoul School of Integrated Sciences and Technologies, often known as Assist, announced on Friday that it is now offering a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree program dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. The new course is “a master’s degree program in blockchain, cryptoeconomics and token economy courses from technological, cryptoeconomic and business strategic perspectives,” the school described.

Claiming that it has “launched the world’s first crypto MBA course for a business graduate school,” Assist wrote:

The mission of Assist business school’s Crypto MBA program is to remedy the lack of academic research and systematic education currently available in the industry, despite a high level of social interest in the blockchain and cryptocurrency.

The professional graduate school has been offering master’s degrees and doctorate degrees in business administration since 2004. Its website claims that the school “has been evaluated as the no. 1 graduate school for business administration,” noting that large corporations such as LG Electronics, KT, Doosan Infracore, and Korea Electric Power Corporation continuously use its courses.

Crypto Curriculum and Regulation

According to Friday’s announcement, “The curriculum includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contract, cryptology, EOS, deep learning and system dynamics mechanisms. The cryptoeconomics curriculum consists of digital currency studies, microeconomics, macroeconomics, behavioral economics and theory on currency finance, game theory and mechanism design.” In addition, students will learn about “management mechanisms, strategic statistics, digital financial accounting, digital marketing strategies, crypto funds, Dapp planning and writing strategy for the persuasive whitepaper.”

The South Korean government is currently working on additional crypto regulatory measures following the implementation of the real-name system in January. Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have been banned domestically since September last year. However, a number of lawmakers have introduced several bills to regulate them.

Recently, a fintech startup filed a complaint with the country’s constitutional court alleging that the government’s ICO ban is unconstitutional.

Crypto Classes on the Rise

While Assist offers an actual MBA degree in crypto, a growing number of business schools worldwide have added crypto classes including Stanford Graduate School of Business, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown University Mcdonough School of Business. Cnbc previously reported that these top schools “are expanding classes in digital currency and blockchain to keep up with demand from students and their future employers.”

Stanford’s business school, ranked number one globally by the Financial Times this year, added a course called “Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technologies.” The school’s website describes, “The course covers all aspects of cryptocurrencies, including distributed consensus, blockchains, smart contracts and applications. We will focus in detail on Bitcoin and Ethereum as case studies.”

Wharton, ranked number one by Forbes, added a class in the fall called “Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Distributed Ledger Technology,” while Georgetown offers an elective that teaches topics such as the history and evolution of fintech, blockchain technology, and their applications.

What do you think of the Crypto MBA program? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Assist, and the South Korean FSC.

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