Erick Pinos, an MIT student who sold his free Bitcoin, nevertheless bought more and now works for a crypto technology company called Ontology. He says he keeps 100% of his savings in Bitcoin and crypto. “I'm all about cryptocurrencies,” he says.
Such students have helped put MIT—known for its connection to breakthroughs like the microchip and radar—in the forefront of another emerging technology. In 2020, CoinDesk, a cryptocurrency news site, ranked MIT as the top university for blockchain, the digital ledger used for verifying and recording Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transactions.
Coindesk cited research centers such as the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, which Rubin co-founded the year after the Bitcoin project, and its crypto-related courses. It also tracked MIT’s prevalence in crypto-careers, which it measured by tracking the alma maters listed on the LinkedIn accounts of the largest and most influential blockchain companies.
Yet, as always, many missed the opportunity. Some let the offer expire without getting a key. Others later lost access to the coin because their wallets stopped operating or they could no longer sign into the associated email addresses.
Still others simply spent it on what may have seemed more appealing at the time: a mango smoothie, new shoes, pizza, beer. In online chatter, students joked about exchanging crypto for a 50-gallon drum of lube or just $49 worth of burritos.
Sam Udotong, then a junior, created an app, called Fireflies, which let students spend money on food delivery. It won a hack-a-thon “awesome award.” Udotong, now 26, collected $3 to $4 in Bitcoin per delivery but unfortunately exchanged it for legal tender.
“If I had held on to that Bitcoin, it would have been more like $300 to $400 per delivery,” says Udotong, co-founder of a San Francisco artificial-intelligence company with the same name as his undergrad app.
Even worse, Udotong spent much of his own Bitcoin at a sushi restaurant then accepting Bitcoin called Thelonious Monkfish.
Some are philosophical. Selam Gano, a freshman at the time, spent her Bitcoin on food, too. She did better than many; it had appreciated three-fold, so she bought $300 worth of groceries.
“It was free money, I don’t have any regrets,” says Gano, a robotics engineer at Pendar Technologies LLC, based in her alma mater's hometown of Cambridge. “I got an MIT degree, which is the most important thing to me.”
Her classmate Holly Haney blew her Bitcoin on food, too, and later kicked herself. “I needed to eat,” says Haney, now a video producer in Oregon, “and here was money.”
Spanjers, the software engineer who held on to her Bitcoin, had a close call. Online, she almost spent a fraction of her Bitcoin, on a $35 “Doppler Effect” T-shirt for her dad, then thought better of it.
The sweet gesture would have cost her more than $4,000. Or, as Spanjers said: “My dad would have had the most expensive T-shirt ever.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.