What happened with MIT Bitcoin Project from 2014

[dkbit98]

MIT students Jeremy Rubin and Dan Elitzer launched the Bitcoin Project initiative in April 2014, offered all undergraduate students on Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus $100 worth of Bitcoin.
They created MIT BitComp competition for developing innovative bitcoin-related apps with teams participating in 3 rounds for winning up to $15,000 in total prizes (at that time).
Jeremy and Dan collected $500,000 from bitcoin enthusiasts donations to fund their project and 3108 undergrads participated in this ''MIT Airdrop'' while Biutcoin price was around $336.
Students had to fill out long questionnaires, go some educational work and set up a Bitcoin wallet, than they could alter exchange it for something of value like cash.
Experiment ended in 2017 and tracing of transactions showed that 1 in 4 people cashed out their Bitcoin, some people even spent Bitcoin on two sushi dinners in restaurant Thelonious Monkfish that accepted BTC ,
and luckiest MIT students was one who forgot about their Bitcoin for few years.

Archived mitbitcoinproject website:
https://archive.is/gFcJi

MIT Spectrum post about Bitcoin Project Experiment from December 2014:
https://spectrum.mit.edu/continuum/mits-bitcoin-experiment-is-underway/

CNBC news report about MIT Bitcoin Project from August 14, 2021:

“A lot of the students would pay the other students half of the bitcoin if they would set it up on their behalf,” explained Phu. He says he helped somewhere between 10 and 12 people set up crypto wallets in exchange for a commission paid in bitcoin. It’s somewhat taken the sting out of the fact that he spent $100 worth of bitcoin — worth more than $14,000 today — on two sushi dinners.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/14/mit-student-gave-away-100-worth-of-bitcoin-to-all-undergrads-in-2014.html

Bloomberg news report about MIT Bitcoin Project from June 4, 2021

“Most of us thought it was a bit of a joke.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-04/bitcoin-btc-mit-experiment-nets-13-000-gain-for-students-who-held-on

[maisao1991]

In my opinion it seems that the project has been discontinued and moved to another operating platform since 2014 I also researched this BTC MIT project but later they are no longer active as before. I'm not sure about this but for now things are not working for the project.

[Hydrogen]

American universities like MIT are large recipients of special interest funding. There has been a crackdown on these illicit sources of funding over the last 5 years. With scientists and university professors facing a backlash of investigations and criminal prosecution due to their being paid off and acting on behalf of foreign influence in ways which threatened national security and violation of intellectual property protections.

MIT especially has published a slew of questionable pieces of late. Which seem politically motivated rather than having legitimately researched content. Polls related to Donald Trump or Joe Bidens public approval ratings are usually conducted by university researchers. Who in turn could accept foreign money and funding in exchange for influencing stats and results.

[NeuroticFish]

FYI, this same topic is already discussed at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5354532