Majoring in Bitcoin: Designing a Curriculum for Higher Education

Good morning. My name is Kristyna. I work in Bitcoin media and education, leading the master's degree in Bitcoin at Hesperides University. Bitcoin is no longer a technical experiment, and we are here to discuss how traditionally slow-moving academia can catch up with something that fundamentally changes how we think about money and society. Please welcome the panel to the stage.

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Good morning, everybody.

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Good morning.

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Where are we standing right now when it comes to academia and Bitcoin?

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There is a big opportunity for growth. I think we are seeing a lot of adoption of Bitcoin education across different countries, but there is still a lot of room left.

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I wish Korok Ray were on this panel right away, because I think we are at a bit of a tipping point at the moment. Korok just launched the Bitcoin Education Institute, which is really aimed at helping fill the gaps that we see today in higher education regarding Bitcoin curriculum. You also have an exciting announcement about your master's program. A Bitcoin major was approved in May, so it is progressing, especially if you look at the past four years or so.

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So there is clearly demand. There are people who want to learn more about Bitcoin. Why does Bitcoin need a structured academic degree? Why does self-study not do the thing for everybody?

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I would actually say that self-study does work. It is what filled this whole conference with, I don't know, 30,000 people this year. But if you take a step back and look at why someone goes to college, what the benefit of going to college is, in my view you are going to ask questions, think about the unknown, and try to move our world forward.

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If you are just learning information that has already been known, you are not really pushing the envelope. Bitcoin is this transformative force in our world in so many areas, from economics to energy to human rights. To continue to build the world that I think we all want to see, having structured education when you are already in school, already meant to be learning and talking with peers, is a necessity. In my opinion, this is one of the most important topics for society.

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I also see value in the structure that a higher education institution can offer, where you can build at the intersection of different topics instead of just navigating Bitcoin Twitter and YouTube by yourself. That structure is very important to me.

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You built your own educational system. What are the pitfalls of doing so?

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You do not have as many peers to discuss with. We are so lucky when we walk within these four walls and are surrounded by people where we can ask, how are you thinking about that, or what do you think of this? I was incredibly fortunate to have people like Sal, professors at Cornell, and others I could go to and ask questions. But most of the time in school, you are sitting in class and having these discussions, and I did not necessarily have that around Bitcoin. That is an area we can fix moving forward with structured education.

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Bitcoin can be approached from so many angles. There is value in creating a framework for understanding the base layers: what Bitcoin is, what proof of work is, why it matters, and how it connects to mining, human rights, markets, and other topics. Those conversations across graduate and undergraduate communities help people find a focus.

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One thing Sal is touching on, which we were also chatting about, is leaning into the grassroots ethos of Bitcoin. There was no top-down instruction saying, this is how you do it. So we said, okay, we will go bottom up. Let's start a club. Let's meet weekly. At the beginning, not many people knew much of anything, so we started with the basics and built good foundations. Then students could climb up from there and do independent research in different areas. I think leaning into the strengths of Bitcoin is important when thinking about what to build and how to build it.

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It is a common build. The way I think about the program at Hesperides University is not just building a curriculum to make your CV better. It is building a community of people who are willing to go beyond very shallow topics, and who are willing to study at the intersection of different topics.

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When we are building this, what do you think is a good approach? We mentioned bottom up, but do we need student demand to change? Do we need to change university curricula? Or do we need to change who is actually teaching it?

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I think it is a little bit of everything. We can look at some case studies. MIT has historically been a leader. Many years ago, they had a Bitcoin course that was more technically focused, and this past fall semester they revamped it. One unique thing they did was invite professors in. They built a curriculum, had students who did not know much about it, and invited professors to come in and learn. That is one important path.

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There was also a survey of thousands of professors across the world who had written papers about Bitcoin and related research, and there is an opportunity to integrate Bitcoin into work that is already happening. Then there are initiatives reaching out to universities and saying, this is important for the future of your students and this community, and then going to work with them.

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I was chatting with someone who shared that she had started a program in Africa across the continent, working with six different universities and scaling up to 12, to go in and teach Bitcoin curriculum. None of those students knew anything prior. It was simply added as a course in the engineering department. So there are many ways to look at it.

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There is also local context. If you are teaching in South America, Africa, or different countries outside the U.S., talking about ETF inflows might not make as much sense as talking about the peer-to-peer nature of Bitcoin and usable money. There is so much growth still to happen, and what I find most exciting is how these platforms of education are becoming more concrete. There are many great frameworks ready to be developed, and people are building.

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You mentioned that you were missing peers. How do we get people excited about taking Bitcoin courses at universities?

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Like anything, you have to show why it matters to them. What is signing up for this course going to help me achieve? That is why, even though it is not directly related to education, jobs are really important. More internships and more job opportunities for Gen Z and people of all ages matter. If you can show that someone took this class, learned this skill, and now there is a job, that helps. Right now there is not a lot of recruiting on campuses. There is not a clear cost-benefit analysis for students. It is not in the immediate incentive structure. If we fix that, it is really important.

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Incentives matter. I have heard from colleagues in MBA programs asking what Bitcoin is and wanting to know more, because they see investment banking, consulting, and other traditional paths being disrupted, including by AI. When people understand how Bitcoin could fit into the ecosystem, especially rising leaders in undergraduate and graduate school, that can create interest.

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Community is also really important. One thing the Bitcoin Education Institute, the Bitcoin Students Network, and work Sal and I were doing at Cornell are focused on is building pockets of community so you do not feel like you are the only person doing this. The Bitcoin Education Institute is building a professor network and helping with grants, reducing the reputational risk someone might face. Having people on a shared mission with you is important.

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I come from a different educational system. I am from Europe, and we are at the stage where even Austrian economics is not being taught at universities. Getting Bitcoin onto university curricula is something unheard of in many places. So we are falling back on our own resources and building free universities and education in Europe.

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Bitcoin is inherently global. How do we build an education curriculum that is prepared for the global nature of Bitcoin, but also keeps it localized and relevant to each region?

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Local context matters. Money means different things in different countries, and the needs of students, professors, and communities can be different depending on geography. You can have the same broad principles, but adoption and application are local.

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I agree. Some elements can be centralized, but a lot should be decentralized to different areas. For instance, Btrust, a nonprofit based in Africa, has created resources on how to run a BitDevs group from a more technical lens. Anyone can download it, but then you take it back to your local community and figure out the best way to run it and what news or issues are most relevant for your area.

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There are similar efforts with open resources that show how to build and localize programs. Some topics, like proof of work and cryptography, are more general across regions. You see places like Vinteum in São Paulo and developer schools in Madeira, Portugal, and elsewhere. But then you ask, how does this affect my community? How can this solve a problem we are facing? That is where localization comes in.

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What I am hearing is that Bitcoiners need to build curricula for themselves, get more engaged in their education, and take more responsibility for their own education, just as they take responsibility for their own money.

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Five to ten years from now, if somebody studies Bitcoin in a master's program, where are they? What can they do that other people cannot do?

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It depends on what they like. If it is finance, the market signals are already there, not just adoption by institutions and individuals, but also proof of work and the network effect. If you master knowledge of the Bitcoin network in your area, the opportunities are wide open depending on where you want to apply it, whether that is finance, policy, education, or something else. The value of Bitcoin education is only going to grow over five or ten years.

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I like that question. There are two parts to the answer. First, if you invest in yourself and your own knowledge, you gain that for yourself. Knowledge shows up, and then you share it with your friends and family. That has a huge impact on them, on your life, and on how you see the world.

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Second, many of us have been influenced by the question of what world we want to put our time and energy into building. When we think about fiat and everything the dollar impacts, it is not just money. It is food, health care, architecture, and many other areas. Bitcoin can touch all of that as well. You can think about how to build a more sound, more truthful world where there is increased agency. That is a hopeful way to look at it.

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In five or ten years, if you are increasing the agency of people by sharing this education and helping them share it further, there is so much still undiscovered. When you find the question that you are uniquely able to answer and discover, the potential is abundant.

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You have a background in Bitcoin and higher education. You built it for yourself, but you also work for a Bitcoin company, Strategy. How are companies today looking at someone who does not necessarily have Bitcoin education, and how are they looking at someone who does have specific Bitcoin education?

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It depends on the role. Sal could not do his job without Bitcoin education, and I certainly could not do my job if I did not know about Bitcoin. But if you are a lawyer, you should have a good, sound understanding of the law, and then also be a bitcoiner. That is additive.

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In general, over the next five to ten years, whatever your field is, there will be many advantages to understanding Bitcoin and how it connects to your work. Whether in nonprofit, for-profit, productivity, mining, policy, or human rights, you have to understand what you are talking about. Little by little, once you have this knowledge, you are able to share it with others and help build the system.

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To answer the question more specifically, it is really important for us at Strategy that employees across the globe understand Bitcoin. There are 27 offices and 1,500 employees, and Bitcoin has the power to change a person's life and their family's life. We want to make sure we are providing education to the whole team. I am grateful that I get to work on that. We are also lucky that the Bitcoin Policy Institute team is nearby in D.C., and they have great educational programming that Strategy can participate in as well. Again, these are community efforts.

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There is specific value in having a relentless focus on Bitcoin and Bitcoin only. Bitcoin has no CMO, no CEO, and no headquarters. Being able to create a structure for education and advance it in a sustainable and scalable way matters. You can see leaders around the world working on this.

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The way I see it, coming from BTC Inc, is that when we are hiring, there are positions where you need an expert in a field. You need a great content person, a good lawyer, or a nontechnical person. There is a big gap in the market for people who are good experts in their fields but are not bitcoiners. They do not get the culture or the reason why. Then you have a lot of bitcoiners who are enthusiastic and understand Bitcoin, but they are not necessarily experts in their field. So there is a gap for education to help people transition from their fiat jobs into Bitcoin jobs.

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We were all people who did not know anything at one point. We all received support from the community and from knowledge that people put out, and we were able to learn more.

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For professors who might be looking at this and might not know, there is a whole ecosystem and community. It blows my mind that there are people in technology, human rights, and other areas putting out knowledge about Bitcoin and how it touches everything, and much of it is free. Very few topics have that. I am always blown away by this network and what is available for those who want access and want to engage.

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But back to my point about structure, there is also a problem. It is very difficult to filter the noise and find the signal. That goes for education and information sources. You can have very technical discussions online and be expected to make up your mind, choose a side, and decide what is right and wrong. So I think there is a need for more structured discussion in academia that can provide some answers.

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Traditionally, innovation was happening through academia. It is not anymore, so academia needs to catch up. AI is getting better at answering questions, so this is becoming even more urgent.

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Is there anything you want to leave as a last note? What drives you? What does education mean to you?

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Sometimes people learn about Bitcoin and all these different areas, and it can feel overwhelming. You may think you have to master all of the topics all at once. That was certainly not the case in my journey. You just start. Listen to a 30-minute podcast. Then try a two-hour one. Read a book. Come to a conference or an event. You can start step by step. It does not matter how old you are. Reach out to people.

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For me, I feel very passionate about this because I think Bitcoin is a transformation of human agency and flourishing for everyone. Education is powerful because it gives you knowledge of what Bitcoin can unlock in your life. That is why I wake up every day excited to work on it.

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For me, Bitcoin is something that no one can take away, and no one can print more of. I can put my hard work, my life, and my energy into something that preserves value. When I look at Bitcoin, and specifically proof of work, it is a peaceful vote to protect your effort, your life, and your work.

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Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your experience, and keep building.

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Thank you.