Bitcoin Forum

MIT is giving 4500 undergrads $100 in BTC this Fall. What will happen to the price?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=590587.0

students themselves wont be putting their own fiat into bitcoin. the reason: because they're students and cant afford it.

what will happen is you will see alot more apps on itunes and google play that are bitcoin enabled. you will see lots of shopping cart extensions, payroll software and other financial gadgets,widgets and apps. all bitcoin enabled for everyone to use.

well thats the short-medium term things to see.. as for the long term you will see the students graduate and start their own businesses, thus bringing a new-wave of bitcoin related businesses.

.............. or, they will just cash out bitcoin for fiat and buy pizza and beer

more places accepting BTC = higher liquidity = BTC has higher value

It will not bring a spike on price... rather it will further push down the exchange rate. 90% of the students will immediately convert the coins to fiat, using either localbitcoins.com or some other exchange.

doesnt matter, adoption will grow

even if all the students cashed out in 1 day on the major exchanges that people use for pricing bitcoin, 1000 coins wont make a dent.. if they cashed out through local bitcoins it definetly wont make a dent. and if they cashed out at different times using localbitcoins, foodler, overstock.com, and many other vendors. it will most definetly not even leave a scratch.

1000 bitcoins is nothing, when you look at the big picture of exchange volume each day. but the potential those 1000 coins can bring to students as part of MIT projects and USING bitcoin. can be astronomical.

you just need to realise that if atleast 20,000 businesses have entered the bitcoin ecosystem before even receiving a bitcoin. then imagine the tools, programs, mobile apps and other usful stuff smart people can come up with while using it.

now with all that said MIT could have saved alot of money by just offering the students coins from the testnet.

More use by more people is good and should bring a good result. Apple has prohibited Bitcoin apps in the past. They would certainly give BTC a boost if they change their mind. Some of those MIT students are smarter than to just cash it out for beer.

So... the long term will be beneficial. I agree that coming up with "useful stuff" (the innovation) will be what truly makes BTC useful.

I don't think there will be any affect on short-term price.
It could bring us some new merchants, new developers and new projects later though, which will be beneficial to bitcoin. :)

I don't know what will happen, but over the long run it may convince other Universities to do the same, and thus the price will eventually rise as the demand by "higher-ups" increases for experiments such as these. I honestly is anyone's guess, but I think that it may only increase in the long run.

I agree it will rise. I did not want to be making predictions at the start of the thread. Plus, the reward halving again in 2016 will surely make it rise even more.

The project is also getting local businesses to accept BTC.
Who cares about a (temporary) "spike in price", this exciting experiment is part of the massive long-term uptrend.  :)

As academic research .. would be nice if each student keep tracking in a database and report what they did with the coins .. could be a nice statistical data sample... just a opinion ;)

Not sure... but when some MIT students will dropout to build their dream around bitcoin, price will definitely surge.

Have to say if MIT students aren't already commonly using Bitcoin, it doesn't a great deal positive for Bitcoin.  What does anyone expect them to create that they couldn't already do so using a few 0.01 bitcoins themselves (or mine, or an altcoin)?  Only experiment i see from this is how quickly they will sell them or use them to otherwise buy something, expect Overstock to report a spike in Bitcoin sales.

Does it look like it is? The only thing that will make the value of BTC go up is when you go out there and spend your BTC and buy more of it.

This is great, student load money will get doubled in Bitcoin market in weeks  ;D

spike?? where? in witch MONITOR ???

The Outer Limits - 1963 Seasons - Intro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCcdr4O-3gE

;

The only thing that will happen, there will be more stoned nerds shortly after that.

Stoned nerds are good for Bitcoin!

Traders care about those temporary spikes. That is how they make money. The spikes and ebbs of the BTC price can be taken care of. This year has been nothing but "ebb" so far.

That is a great idea. Surely they are going to do it, since this is termed "an experiment".

well thanks ... in mind was just like ...

http://seedandsprout.com/s11_gd573/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Carbaugh_1.jpg

Only virus spread like this  ;D

While I think this is a great idea I expect the students will quickly sell their btc.  If they sell it by opening coinbase accounts or something like that it may at least help the community.  However, more likely they will sell to friends or friends of friends.  Still I think it gets bitcoin into a community that is in position to have some positive influence going forward.

all of the adoption related news is nothing in comparison to the sheer weight of china and all the huge blocks of coins in the market. it causes tiny green candles amidst a sea of large red candles. this adoption will raise the price eventually but not right now.

mit students shoud be like ..

.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUEZCxBcM78

Very cool! Doubt it'll put much of a dent in price but perhaps will encourage other universities to replicate this and start incorporating virtual currencies in their curriculums...and cafeterias?

More brainpower to the network  ;D

I am pretty sure that if the MIT hands out $450 000 in bitcoin to their students, the students will be required to write an essay about bitcoin or something, selling off bitcoin immediately would probably not be a smart idea because they might not learn from it.