MIT Bitcoin Expo 2014 took place on May 3rd and it had consisted of participants ranging from faculty, to staff and to more than 300 students.
More than 300 students along with faculty and community members visited the MIT Bitcoin Expo to her the speakers talking about bitcoin industry.
Jeremy Rubin, an MIT undergraduate studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, organized the event along with Dan Elitzer, the Founder and President of the MIT Bitcoin Club.
Earlier they managed to raise more than $500,000 in bitcoin to give $100 in bitcoin to all students in the 2014 fall semester.
HackMIT, the College Cryptocurrency Network and the MIT Society of Women Engineers also took part and will be participating in the other bitcoin project this fall.
The Expo on the May 3rd planned to involve visitors in the tools and know-how needed for the “experiment”.
Mr. Elitzer mentioned to CoinDesk: “We were aiming to make students aware of the tools and resources available to them so they can start working on projects related to bitcoin, whether that is building some sort of new product or service, contributing to an open source project, or joining up with an existing venture.”
Establishing Bitcoin’s Fundamentals
The first half of the day was comprised of panels focusing on a wide range of topics surrounding bitcoin. This includes the digital currency’s technical aspects, the current legal environment, and the nature of the bitcoin marketplace as it relates to consumers and investors.
Following each panel, the floor was opened to questions that ranged from open enthusiasm to pointed criticism.
Alan Reiner, founder and CEO of Armory Technologies Inc., started the event with his speech about the fundamentals of virtual currency, the decentralized network and its functions also covering the steps of transaction authorization in his presentation. Later, attendees received paper wallets with $2 of free bitcoin.
Sean Neville the Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Circle Internet Financial talked about the process by which digital currency can become more mainstream with users.
Other discussions covered the elements of coding for bitcoin projects and also gave insights into some of the platforms and tools available.
Coding and More Technological Involvement
Gavin Andresen’s panel focused on the open-source bitcoin projects. Moreover Andresen announced that it would be good if some people from the audience could take part in projects commenting that a good way for students to take part is to help the developers review code.
At the end of the question-answer part, Andresen let out an idea of experimentation and in what way it relates to the MIT bitcoin distribution and digital currency. Mr. Andresen said:
“If an experiment fails, it was an experiment, right? I think as long as you’re clear about expectations, it’s okay to take risks.”
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