Micro startup/investment class project/experiment in China

[da2ce7]

This is borderline psychological experiment.

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

[1714015952]

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[1714015952]

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[Nefario]

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.

[Nefario]

Nefario, I think it is great project for students too. I, personally, love such group projects. In my recent study towards masters in information security we had a group project where 5 teams of students prepared a model of a website with public and private information to given specs and on the 'war day' all groups attacked each other with goal to protect own private information and recover private information of opponents. It was lots of fun.

Of course, my group won.  (it is not easy to break into hardened freebsd). There is more to that story, but this it not the place to tell it, unfortunately.

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

[rebuilder]

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"?

[Nefario]

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.

[kiba]

What do they know about bitcoin?

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

[Nefario]

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.

[Nefario]

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.

[no to the gold cult]

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

[UncleHagbard]

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.

[genjix]

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?

[AllYourBase]

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

[bitcool]

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

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

[jimbobway]

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.

[Nefario]

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?

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.

[Ryland R. Taylor-Almanza]

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

[jimbobway]

Nefario,

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

[iya]

"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.

[RodeoX]

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!

[genjix]

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.