Early Adopters

Business schools are getting pressure from two sides: growing student population interest in cryptocurrencies, and successful companies, looking to hire graduates with practical knowledge in the technology (tech) undergirding the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin.Also read: Over One Million People Enroll in Online Crypto Class

Bitcoin Tech Accepted at Ivy League Schools

“We believe it will have the biggest impact on contracting, logistics and supply chains, healthcare, public administration, assets clearing, property, transactions,” Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley lecturer Greg LaBlanc told Agence France Presse, speaking about technology undergirding bitcoin, the blockchain.

“When people think about blockchain they think about cryptocurrencies,” Mr. LaBlanc continued. “Pretty much every function of businesses are going to be affected by this.”Next semester, Haas School of Business  “will offer its first ever course in blockchain software,” AFP’s Luc Olinga writes.

The school “will handpick 60 students from the departments of business, engineering and law and split them into groups of six to explore possible applications of the technology.”Haas is ranked in the top ten business schools, seventh to be exact, according to US News & World Report.

Cliche as a Way to Cryptocurrencies

Blockchain, for whatever reason, is the most-oft put cliche in crypto circles. It’s almost a watchword when deciding how new someone is: the more they pepper sentences with phrases such as “blockchain technology,” the more keen listeners understand they’re probably lacking in real-world bitcoin knowledge.

Precisely because its been picked up by corporate business types, ironically, it has become a way for that community to embrace cryptocurrencies … which carry stigmas of unofficial or the anarchic (or can).



“It was originally developed as the accounting method for bitcoin,” Mr. Olinga explains. “But while that cryptocurrency remains controversial with some players in finance, bankers increasingly see exposure to blockchain as a must.”

Yale, Wharton, Oh My!

It’s a new world for business students, and a great deal of that change is due to bitcoin. As AFP notes, students “who wish to work in trading must learn how to code, while bankers need to understand algorithms and big data to be able to attract new clients and devise strategies for fast-changing markets.”“At Yale, about 20 percent of 2016 graduates found jobs in finance,” according to AFP.





Yale School of ManagementYale School of Management’s Stephen Daffron puts a finer point on it, saying if students “don’t understand how to evaluate a company that tries to employs blockchain, then they won’t probably be a good fit for us. ” .The Wharton School’s Barbara Hewitt explains,

“I increasingly see students opting to explore technical minors, such as in computer science, to be well prepared for the growing use of technology in many fields.”

Discover more stories on Bitcoin.com here: https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-ivy-league-yale-wharton-haas-offer-courses-on-blockchain-tech/

Blockchain technology is proving to offer major advantages beyond its well-known applications in the sphere of cryptocurrency. A new app allows MIT graduates to prove ownership of their degree using the digital ledger.

DIGITAL DIPLOMA WITH BLOCKCHAIN

Since the school’s inception, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has issued paper diplomas to over 200,000 students. This summer, a pilot program saw 111 graduates receive their credentials via a specially developed app, in addition to traditional means.The Blockcerts Wallet app was developed by Learning Machine in conjunction with the MIT Registrar’s Office.

 It uses blockchain technology to give graduates easy access to verifiable, tamper-proof version of their diploma that they can share with potential employers.

“MIT has issued official records in a format that can exist even if the institution goes away, even if we go away as a vendor,” said Learning Machine’s CEO Chris Jagers in a press release. “People can own and use their official records, which is a fundamental shift.

”Blockcerts Wallet uses the same implementation of blockchain that underpins Bitcoin to verify the legitimacy of students’ credentials. When an individual downloads the app a pair of public and private keys are generated, and a one-way hash is added to the blockchain.

The student’s public key is inscribed into the digital copy of the diploma, and the app has access to the private key for the purposes of proving ownership. When someone wants to check that the diploma is legitimate, they can access a web portal where they can paste a link or upload the digital file and receive confirmation of its owner’s identity, which is instantaneous and free of charge.

BEYOND BITCOIN

Blockchain rose to prominence because of its key role in the cryptocurrency boom. However, we’re already seeing the technology make a huge different in all kinds of different applications.




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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are looking into ways that blockchain could be used to handle the fallout from major epidemics. Airline companies are figuring out how the use a digital ledger to keep track of maintenance and repairsacross the breadth of their fleet, across the globe.

The media industry could be completely transformed by the technology’s potential to approve access to content for paying customers.

As trust in blockchain grows, we’re starting to see major institutions test the waters. China is considering whether it could be used to collect taxes, while in the US there are calls for it to be implemented to offer improvements to the State Department.

Wherever there’s a need to keep an indisputable record of an action that can be linked to an individual, blockchain can lend a hand. Many would point to cryptocurrency as one of the most important technological advances of recent years – but the technology that underpins it might end up having a greater overall effect, simply based on the scope of its usage. 

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

Discover more blockchain reports on Futurism here: https://futurism.com/mit-has-started-issuing-diplomas-using-blockchain-technology/