http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/11/22/the-university-of-bitcoin-rises-in-cyprus/THIS IS FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE!!
DANNY, THE CYPRIOT COMPANY THAT WILL UNDERTAKE ALL PAYMENTS MENTIONED IN THE ARTICLE (The university itself is working with a Cypriot company that will handle the transactions on its behalf)
IS NEO & BEE, RIGHT??
3:49 pm
Nov 22, 2013
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Paul Vigna
University of Nicosia
It’s been a hyperkinetic week for bitcoin. The virtual currency’s value shot through the digital roof amid a Senate hearing on crypto currencies that was generally supportive. On some exchanges, bitcoin’s value briefly touched $900. If that isn’t high enough, Richard Branson is talking about taking bitcoin as payment for trips to space.
But one rather mundane news story might be the most significant of all: The University of Nicosia in Cyprus announced it will accept bitcoin as payment, for everything from tuition to rent to books at the bookstore and meals in the cafeteria. The school also announced a master’s level course of study in digital currency, one that is aimed not at bitcoiners themselves, but at business professionals, government officials and anybody seeking to learn about the field.
“We might be seeing the advent of the Internet of money right before our eyes,” Dr. Christos Vlachos, the university’s chief financial officer, told MoneyBeat in a phone interview from Nicosia. “We are possibly at the commencement of a new era.”
What’s most interesting about this announcement, to anybody concerned with the long-term prospects for bitcoin, is that the move didn’t come as a result of Cyprus’s banking crisis this year. Rather, it was simply in response to students, many of them overseas, asking for it. This speaks not to bitcoin’s potential as a end-run around the much derided “fiat currencies,” or as a source of a Pets.com-like boom and bust, but simply to its utility as a way for people to conduct their day-to-day routines.
“It has nothing to do with the banking crisis,” Dr. Vlachos said. “We have a university that has students all over the world, Africa, Asia, Europe. We’ve been getting requests for the last couple of months to take bitcoins.” He noted a large number of the requests came countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, where some students have less access to, and higher costs from, traditional banking systems.
The university, the largest private school in Cyprus, has about 8,500 students, strung across its Nicosia campus, affiliated schools like the medical program it runs with St. George’s University of London, and an online program. The university dug into bitcoin, and studied it – “we did undertake a very serious study,” he said – and came to the conclusion it would be something that could help its students, that it would be quicker and more convenient. “We said, why not?”
The school expects initially that several hundred students may take advantage of bitcoin, Dr. Vlachos said, but in the years to come he thinks it will become a mainstream form of payment. The university itself is working with a Cypriot company that will handle the transactions on its behalf, converting any payments in bitcoin into euros at prevailing rates. The school isn’t looking to profit off this, he stressed.
“We believe the program we’re launching will be of great interest, not just to consumers, but to bankers, regulators, government officials, reporters,” he said. “This will affect the society at large. This will affect the society as a whole.”
