Bitcoin Forum

So the college semester has begun, and I think I have done something cruel to my classes.

I have 3 English/Business major's and this semester I am doing something different with them.

I have given them a project, worth 35% of their final mark.


They must form a bitcoin company.
I give the company 2BTC as a startup fund
To pass the company must have over 8BTC at the end of the semester
Extra marks are given for anything over this amount.

Each company must have a CEO, the ceo's final mark is 100% related to the amount the company has, nothing else. So the CEO's success is connected to the success of the company.

Each company must have a CFO, this person is responsible for all the money, the are also responsible for paying staff (although the CEO decides what to pay). The CEO chooses the CFO, the CFO cannot be changed. Also the CFO gets paid.

Staff- everyone else is staff, they must get the companies to give them a job, every staff member must be paid each week. The staff negotiate with the CEO for their pay.

The CEO can hire and fire anyone(except the CFO, they're stuck with them) at anytime.

Non-CEO's mark for this project depends on how much btc they can earn before the end of the semester.

Anyone without a job when we have class(once a week) loses marks, not from their project but from participation(worth 40% of the final mark). Go unemployed for too long and they fail the class.

Companies can trade with each other, borrow, lend, beg, steal, I don't really care.

Each week the CEO must present a report on their company, how much the have, what they spent, who works there etc.


This does a few things, firstly it forces the CEO to push the company to succes, or they fail the class. This means they will fire staff who are lazy, try to hire good ones etc. Making sure lazy students are thrown out od the group

It forces lazy students to work hard, they can't stay in a company if they don't work and bring something to it. And they can't stay unemployed without failing the class.

And because they must get their BTC from outside China they will be forced to interact with others in English.

It also turns the class into something of a market, hopefully it will be great experience for all those involved.

I have 3 classes doing this, each class has about 100 students, which is split into 6 companies.

So I must opologise, over the next few weeks and months there will be an influx of users to the forums with quite poor English trying to do, what will most likely be fairly small amounts of business.

This is a kind of experiment, I want to see what kind of return I get if any, I also want to see what these kids do, and if they will make any kind of difference to the bitcoin economy.

What do you think?

It seems there are only 5 Bitcoin nodes in mainland China, excluding Hongkong and Taiwan.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=https://smsz.net/btcStats/bitcoin.kml

I've been watching this map for a while now, the growth rate there is one of the lowest too. With active member like you, I'd expect more.

So you're a professor at a university in China?

I think this is a fantastic idea, and I look forward to seeing the experiment unfold!  Do they get to keep the BTC they earn? 

Yes and no. I'm not a professor(professors do research), I just teach at a university. I develop the materials and classes, I'm certainly the bes English teacher here at least.

I will get my initial "investment" back, plus 25% of anything else they make, the rest is theirs.

25% seems a bit much, but I like this idea. Did you already start this? I want to know how it goes.

It's high-risk venture capital.  25% is not a lot.

2 BTC is an awfully tight budget... One small mistake could cost them their entire company. That's a hard assignment.

Not really, the startup capital is to allow a market environment to develop in the class. Staff would be paid 0.0001BTC a week or something like that.  Of course this will trend upwards for the best staff, and downwards for the worst. So it could be 1,100,1000,or 10,000BTC it doesnt matter. The companies would be able to pay each other to do work.They can also beg or borrow from each other. With the exception of the CEO's and CFO's not being able to leave the company it's a completely free market, with no rules only that those with more money win.

They probably wont be spending the btc to the west but among each other.

As for when I will be starting, today already. I've already introduced the whole idea to two classes, one seemed interested, the other not so much. It seems that they're put off by how difficult it will be for them more than anything. The next class will be tomorrow.

Oh, I had assumed that they were going out in the wild. If they are just trading with each other, the amount of money is irrelevant.

Exactly, but at the same time, they're going to be trying to offer goods or services to those on this forum.

I gave them 2BTC, their company needs 8BTC to pass, they're not going to get this just trading with each other. At least not without most companies losing and only one winning, which may happen.

I have no idea what they're going to come up with. But one thing is for sure, a good few of them will be on here.

Oh also, this won't expand nodes in China, at least not yet as they will be using mybitcoin accounts at first. Most of these kids don't have computers, they'll be using the college libraries.

Possibly. However I still have a chance, unless someone is actually looking for me and questioning the students as they start showing up on the forum.

Is this even legal in China? 0.0

Well, bitcoin itself, being used as a currency for normal goods and services in China no it's not.

Giving students "play money" to "trade" with each other and with foreigners online for educational purposes I think is ok. Anyway, it would take the government to come out and specifically state "You can't use this" to make it illegal. As long as I'm not operating an exchange(which I no longer do  :P ) then it's fine.

Great Plan, not sure it's entirely moral... perhaps a little Evil even.... a Great Evil Plan indeed Doctor Nefario. Mwa-hahaha.

http://www.filmofilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/despicable_me.jpg

At a stroke you've engaged hundreds of young, bright, motivated Chinese people with the bitcoin economy.

Evil. Mwa-hahahah.

Yes this is where I got my forum name. I think it is sad that Toy Story 3 won the award and not Despicable me.

I really like that movie.

This is borderline psychological experiment.

He's not a Proffesor, he's an evil mastermind. and lecturer.

It'd be great if more bitcoiners were in a position to do something like this. I might try suggesting a competition on other forums I'm involved with. Merely a challenge to make as many bitcoins as possible in a month. Winner is the Winner, all participants of course get whatever bitcoins they managed to get. No venture capital as the world is your oyster. Fight!

you could do this next semester... however team up with the psychology people in your uni!  ;D  could kill two birds with one stone.

Actually I'm doing this for some selfish reasons.

My students are ok, but lazy. This caused me a lot of work last semester and I'm a little anonyed at them. I worked hard preparing lessons and they often had no interest or made no effort.

For group projects there were some who worked and other who didn't. I hate this.

So I wanted to force them to do as much work as possible, as revenge. But at the same time cut down on the time I need to prepare for each class. With this way the students do the work not me HAHA.

I also want to make a kind of guaranteed investment. Even if it's small. So what better way to make the investment work than by academic fiat. Those who make a return pass the class, those who don't fail. It also means that they must come to class otherwise they lose a lot of marks.

And on top of that it will spread the information about bitcoin.

What is your opinion of OpenBSD with regards security and as a production system?

So - not to give them ideas, but they will think of this themselves anyway - all they have to do to pass is to have the means to buy 6 BTC and pretend to buy something from their "company"?

I guess that would work.

However it's a little more complicated than that. These are relatively poor students. Of a class of 100, 3 have computers. And then they would need to find someone who accepted yuan for btc, and no one does because almost no one else in China has btc.

They could exchange to USD and make a deposit to mtgox or something similar, perhaps the entire class could pool their resources together and do this. If they did I would be quite surprised, and not nessisarily in a bad way.

But I believe in class I did emphasise that is was to be gotten through trade. So maybe they just won't think of it.

What do they know about bitcoin?

Shouldn't this thread belong in the bitcoin section, not the offtopic section?

Why, it's not specifically bitcoin related, it's about a project that happens to use bitcoins.

Project update:

All 3 classes have been told what they must do. There is a total of 19 "companies" spread across those 3 classes with over 250 students.

I have also made a change to the rules, that they can not only trade with other companies in their class, but with any company or person in the other classes also.

This should create something of a campus wide micro market.

Great stuff. Will be interesting to see how this develops.

I think that you may be in a unique position to try this project. It certainly wouldn't work well in the west with western students I feel.
I suspect you are not being *entirely*evil. The potential to develop some very useful skills and explore the implications of bitcoins strengths and weaknesses in this environment is intriguing.
I am following with interest.

How come they must trade with each other? Why not make it so they have to earn 100 BTC per business using these forums or whatever?

This is awesome.  Wish I had had at least one college class that was half as cool as this.  Please post updates!  :)

I am sure he is a professor, an evil one (.999 pure)  ;D

Nefario,

This is a great idea.  I know most American universities allow their students to deal with real money.  For instance, most business colleges let students manage million dollar mutual funds.  They make group decisions and buy and sell stocks.  The students don't keep the money but if their fund makes a significant profit then they are pretty much guaranteed jobs on Wallstreet.  I know of a person who found a job like this managing a million dollar international mutual fund and making 20%+ profit.  A lot of investment companies offered him $100K salaries to come work for them.

One thing you said bothers me though.  You said you wouldn't care if your students begged, loaned, stole, etc.  The stealing part is definitely a moral concern in American universities.  A student would be expelled from the college if it was found he stole to pass a class.  I would inform your students of not to steal.

Other than that great work on a wonderful idea.  I wish more teachers would do this.

They don't have to trade with each other, just that they can. To pass the company needs over 8btc by the end. They need to get most of this from users on this forum.

This is a really cool idea. I would have so much fun doing something like this for school!

Nefario,

How are things going with your experiment???  Please let us know:-)

"It's high-risk venture capital." lol
As was said before it's more an experiment on psychology / creativity, because of the miniscule 2 BTC startup capital.
The task of turning 2 BTC into 8 is equivalent to turning 0 into 6, unless you're very lucky in gambling. If the 2 BTC should represent the fixed money supply of a mini economy (wages of 0.0001BTC, etc), there is no way for you to measure surplus value and success. They will eventually have to sell something to the outside world, but then it's easier to just do a freelance job for a 3rd party, from the beginning, requiring no startup capital at all.

Maybe your students could start collecting all the money America owes China in Bitcoins. ;)

Seriously though, I am also a teacher and I like your idea a lot!

If you like the idea then show it by spending your bitcoins on them. There has to be some bitcoins available for them to win. ATM it seems everyone's being really stingy.

There are open offers (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4562.msg66992#msg66992), and jimbobway has been paying for smiles and laughs (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4570.msg66914#msg66914). I think there's great potential here, but the sudden influx has come of a bit of a shock to many forum posters.

Yes, don't make it too easy on them. Essentially you can pay them very little, certainly don't give them something for trying.