Bitcoin Education Institute

Promoting teaching and research on Bitcoin in higher education
501(c)(3)

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Calling all faculty and PhD candidates – if you teach and/or research Bitcoin, we want to hear from you.

BEI is proud to announce our First Annual Conference, which will be held at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, on July 31, 2026. The Conference is by academics, for academics.

We’re offering honoraria for selected speakers:

💰 $3,000 – Teaching Talk
💰 $1,500 – Research Talk
💰 $500 – Grad Student Poster Session

The only rule? The topic must be specific to Bitcoin – nothing that addresses crypto or blockchain in a general sense. We're reviewing applications are on a rolling basis.

Apply here:
🔗 Teaching Talk: https://t.co/OOWE02k5Vo
🔗 Research Talk: https://t.co/payhjkd8Jl
🔗 Poster Session: https://t.co/OyCUzIDCfP

And if you're interested in simply, register for free here: https://t.co/BRBW0gv79G

See you in DC! ⚡️ #Bitcoin #BEI #HigherEd

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Earning money shouldn’t require becoming a portfolio manager.

Protecting it shouldn’t either.

Henry Hazlitt’s one lesson still holds: look past the immediate effects on one group and examine the longer consequences for everyone.

When money can be created at will, the immediate winners are governments, debtors, and connected interests.

The losers are savers, wage earners, and future generations.

Bitcoin asks the same question Hazlitt did about sound money: how much power over the value of your work should rest in the hands of politicians and central banks?

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Henry Hazlitt called printing money “the world’s biggest industry” if measured in monetary terms.

He was right. Global broad money is now ~$145–150 trillion.

Recent annual increases have run $10–13+ trillion.

That single-year money creation exceeds the full revenue of major global industries (IBISWorld 2026):

• Life & health insurance: $6.2T
• Auto sales: $5.1T
• Commercial real estate: $4.9T
• Oil & gas exploration & production: $4.3T

Creating more money does not create more goods, services, or real wealth. It mainly dilutes the purchasing power of existing money.

Bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million. Economic output has no such fixed limit.

More goods and services do not require more units of money.

Bitcoin challenges us to distinguish real economic growth from monetary expansion.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Every monetary system makes choices about who can issue money, hold it, and transfer it.

Bitcoin makes a different set of choices available to study.

Education should help students trace those choices to their consequences for individuals, businesses, and society.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Bitcoin education has a practical test: can someone explain their choices to a person they trust?

Why this wallet? Why this backup? Who can authorize a payment?

Clear answers turn unfamiliar technology into responsibilities people can understand.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

“Digital gold” is a useful comparison. It is not a guarantee that Bitcoin behaves like gold.

Researchers compared their daily returns around COVID-19 and the Russia–Ukraine war. Gold’s statistical patterns were comparatively stable, while Bitcoin’s changed more across crisis periods, with extreme moves that a standard bell curve struggles to capture.

The lesson: understanding an asset means studying how it behaves under stress, beyond the name we give it. Research by Priyanka Nagar, Luca A. Gabin and Keotshepile Mandona of Stellenbosch University.

See the full paper here:
https://t.co/R3Vl8cpmzx

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Students will encounter claims about Bitcoin long before they encounter a course on it.

Education should give them enough understanding to recognize a sound argument, challenge a weak one, and know when they need more evidence.

That is a responsibility worth taking seriously.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Bitcoin gives education something rare:

A working monetary system whose design is open to examination.

Students can study the rules, test the software, and debate the economics.

That is an intellectual opportunity universities should take seriously.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Election Day highlights the difference between Bitcoin policy and the Bitcoin network.

Elected officials can shape how people and businesses use Bitcoin.

Participants independently enforce the network’s rules. No election gives a political party control over those rules.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

We earn money today to meet needs we cannot fully predict.

Studying Bitcoin brings that everyday decision into economics: how do monetary rules shape our ability to plan, save, and invest?

Money connects present work to future choices.

Education should explore that connection.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Students should be able to enter a Bitcoin classroom without choosing a side.

Curiosity is enough.

A serious course gives them time to understand the system before asking them to evaluate its place in the world.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

The next generation should encounter Bitcoin through thoughtful teaching before having to navigate it alone.

A sound education introduces its possibilities, explains its risks, and gives students the judgment to make informed decisions.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

18 years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto published what we believe is one of the most important documents ever written.

The Bitcoin white paper connected mathematics, computing, and economics to reimagine how money could work.

Its ideas deserve to be studied for generations to come.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Bitcoin challenges ideas that students are often taught to take for granted.

Who should control money?

What makes ownership secure?

How do institutions earn trust?

Education should give students the foundation to examine those questions for themselves.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Universities help society understand ideas that change the world.

Bitcoin deserves that same intellectual effort.

Its implications for money, ownership, and economic coordination are too significant to leave outside serious academic discussion.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

When you receive a payment online, how do you know it’s valid?

Did you check it yourself, or did your banking app just tell you it arrived?

Usually, you trust the institution to update its records and make the funds available.

Bitcoin offers a different option. You can check the payment yourself with your own node.

You confirm it follows the rules, spends available funds, and is included in the blockchain.

This changes trust, verification, and how money works on the internet.

This is worth serious study in universities.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

How does an idea from outside the financial system begin to challenge it?

A study of Bitcoin suggests that people don’t need the same motivations to contribute to the same change.

As different groups build and use Bitcoin in their own ways, their efforts can strengthen an alternative to established financial practices.

The research is by Saurav Kumar and Dmitrj Slepniov of Aalborg University and Niall MacKenzie of the University of Strathclyde.

See the full paper here:
https://t.co/AqcRbksDfL

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

@nonhelix Exactly. Terms like “wallet” and “coins” create misleading mental models of how Bitcoin actually works.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

A Bitcoin wallet doesn’t contain coins.

Most people do not understand this.

The wallet contains keys that authorize spending, while the Bitcoin network records the transactions.

Understanding that separation explains how a wallet can stay offline while its owner still receives bitcoin.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

Bitcoin deserves a place in the curriculum because of the questions it forces us to ask.

What makes money credible?

How does ownership work?

Can strangers coordinate without a central authority?

These questions reach well beyond Bitcoin.

[Bitcoin Education Institute @BTCedu]

The future of Bitcoin education should include a lab.

Let students watch a transaction enter the mempool, wait for a block, and receive confirmations.

Seeing the process turns unfamiliar vocabulary into something they can understand.