Important to teach people about Bitcoin – Bitcoin Magazine
This is an opinion editorial by Phil Snyder, professor, video director and editor.
While I was first developing my Bitcoin course at the University of Houston, I felt a bit like Dr. Albert Schweitzer landing in Equatorial Africa in 1913. I had my trusty black bag full of orange pills, but had no idea of any of the natives would swallow what I prescribed. Then there was the obligatory rabbit hole to dig first so they would have somewhere to go for the necessary harrowing fall. As is the case in any missionary effort, the first imperative is to establish a beachhead by winning over the tribal chiefs. In my case, they will be the coordinator of the digital media program and the chair of our department at the University of Technology.
But before I stuck my neck out, I needed to see if any other Bitcoin missionaries had gone before me. I was surprised to discover that as of Fall 2020, there was not a single accredited course on Bitcoin in the entire university system – not even in Computer Engineering or the College of Business. The only higher education course I could find at the time was (now SEC Chairman) Gary Gensler’s 2018 offering at MIT, which has millions of views on YouTube. So it’s not like there isn’t a market for it. A recently published survey found that two-thirds of parents and college graduates who had an understanding and stake in cryptocurrencies believe the subject should be required in schools. Honestly, as a non-tenured associate professor whose job was to teach film, video, and animation, I wasn’t keen on taking on an additional load of this size and risk, but in the end, my conscience insisted on was my trustee duty.
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I’m skipping the parts of this missionary metaphor about dodging poison darts, even though there were a few. After receiving permission to teach the course, we created a leaflet to be circulated among potential students at the college. I was pictured with one of the new representations of a “bitcoin” and gave it as an incentive for students to sign up. My boss sent it out to a few hundred students and said I would give each participant a bitcoin! You’re right if you assume he didn’t understand the basics. There were a few students who knew enough to reply that it had to be a joke, and I was glad not to be sued for false advertising. Soon after that, my boss was the first to receive my introductory lecture.
When the three-credit course was underway, El Salvador’s rollout of bitcoin as legal tender was in full swing. One of my students was from San Salvador, and his family back home experienced President Nayib Bukele’s bold initiative firsthand. My student solemnly expressed his and his family’s fears and concerns about the top-down implementation. I repeatedly expressed my sincere hope to him that it would all work out to their great benefit and that he would be able to take what he learned on the course and put it to good use at home as a newly minted Bitcoin evangelist .
As I write this, we are in the third week of the fall semester of 2022. During a lecture, while I was describing bitcoin’s resistance to confiscation and protection against inflation, one of my students chimed in that she was from Venezuela and that she and her family personally had experienced the complete devastation caused by the unscrupulous dictator’s unsound monetary policy. Nicolás Maduro. She agreed that small bitcoin miners found financial salvation from the disasters around them. I managed to keep my composure, but it was a struggle. The emotions in the classroom were palpable.
Stories like these are real anecdotal evidence of the great need for the incredibly far-reaching solution that is Bitcoin. Americans sometimes chuckle about our “first world” problems like not having a wallet big enough to hold all our fiat, while citizens in developing countries face life-and-death circumstances that bitcoin can (and is) solving. Yet we are still a long way from reaching a critical mass of conversion.
I don’t see myself as being on the front lines of the war against fiat here in my usual academic job, but I do hope to make a genuine impact in the fight. As part of our outreach efforts, we have partnered with the Texas Blockchain Council and the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce to host popular educational networking events, and we will soon be mining bitcoin as a research project with a state-of-the-art ASIC miner and support from Foundry Digital.
As a Bitcoiner, you may be experiencing similar feelings to mine a couple of years ago: my head is exploding with anticipation at the world-disrupting potential of bitcoin, but without any idea how, beyond investing, I can get involved in spreading the gospel. Well, the good news is that you are already on your way by educating yourself, which is the first step. You’ve seen the sights here in the rabbit hole – getting “curious and curious” – and as you feed your growing curiosity with the magical mushrooms of expanded knowledge, opportunities are sure to emerge at every providential nexus. Whether it’s on the streets of San Salvador or at the checkout counter of Costco, you’re being trained by an omniscient, invisible intelligence that loves you and loves the people you’re sent to orange pill.
“Of all who have received much, much will be required; and to whom they have entrusted much, of him they shall ask all the more.” (Jesus in Luke 12:48)
This is a guest post by Phil Snyder. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
