EB47 – College Crypto: Jacob Sears And Dean Masley Talk About Bitcoin Education

Transcript

hello welcome to epicenter Bitcoin the show which talks about the Technologies projects and startups driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency Revolution my name is Sebastian coutuo and I am joined today by Two Gentlemen uh of the college cryptocurrency network Jacob Sears and Dean masley hi guys hey how you doing hey thank you both for coming on uh so for our listeners uh Brian is not here today while we're getting ready for the show he sent me an email or a text message telling me that uh he went for a he went for a hike in the country and there's no trains is there some sort of a train strike in Germany and so he's stuck in the German Countryside he may join us uh

at some point uh during the show but I haven't been able to get a hold of him so Brian I hope you're all right and and for for those of you not living in Europe you can uh consider ourselves lucky that you don't have to go through things like train strikes which happen on a regular basis here so perhaps you can start by introducing yourselves uh Jacob could you introduce yourself yeah so um as mentioned I'm Jacob uh I'm the director of student Outreach for college cryptocurrency um but most of my time is taking up uh being a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks uh studying political

science in my third year I actually just finished up my thesis um and uh yeah that's most of my life as Academia right now the Student Life gotta love it and Dean yeah so I'm Dean masley I'm the creative director we're here at the CCN helping with all like the Flyers media logo and help other schools make sure they're all nice and spiffy um but also I'm a student at the University of Delaware I'm a marketing and German student and I'm also the president of the cryptocurrency club at UT we just founded a few weeks ago awesome now um so I think this is probably the show where we've had the

uh the widest difference in time zones uh Jacob you're in Alaska it's 10 a.m and uh Dean you're in Delaware so basically there's like on each side of the world right now yeah our podcasting um yeah so I I mean I I just found out about the crypto College uh crypto College cryptocurrency network uh actually this week I was a PTC to be in Brussels and I met uh the executive director Jeremy Gardner and we did the panel together on bitcoin marketing which will be released later this week and um and I thought that you know it would be interesting to have you guys on to talk about what you do because I think

it's really interesting in terms of being able to reach a lot of people and frankly people that have a potential being really interested in this technology because they're not old enough to be sort of the old world traditional sense uh Financial you know banking kind of thing um and also uh not young enough to not give a damn about uh their future um so I I was really interested in you know what the college cryptocurrency network does and you know immediately told Jeremy you know we should have someone on and unfortunately he's uh taking a flight and a few hours couldn't be on but it's great to have uh you guys

on uh to talk about all that so can can you sort of introduce the cryptocurrency network what it is how it got started just in a general sense yeah so um I guess just to preface everything to cover our own asses here um you know we're speaking as individuals not for the organization but uh everything we'll be talking about will be our experiences with the organization and the students in the cryptocurrency world but um as far as the college cryptocurrency network goes uh uh what we uh what we call it is an advocacy and Outreach group um basically students reach out to us um and uh they say hey we want to form a club somewhere

um then we say okay we give more resources because that's what we are we're the college cryptocurrency network um we let them access have access to our resources uh which includes media Flyers uh you know we've got a design team that we just formed I'll go on about later uh we've got uh draft documentation to help them form their clubs we've got our professional networks we've got our network of uh companies uh that can help sponsor events for them and things like that um we have a lot of things that we uh have to help to to have to offer to help them move along and help get people involved at their colleges and that's really what we want to wanna what we want to help encourage is uh the the education

uh Innovation and advocacy of uh of blockchain Technologies uh primarily on College college campuses but everywhere uh because you know Collegiate campuses are where we've a got the young people B well so where all the research is being done where we've gotten a lot of innovation coming out of so um as far as when it was uh founded in uh uh goes all the way back to uh oh so long ago about seven and a half months uh it was uh University of Michigan uh Stanford and MIT if I remember correctly um Jeremy Gardner and Daniel block are our co-founders and they're both uh hailing from the University of Michigan and um

basically they form their club uh then they got the crazy idea that there might be other clubs out there besides them and they started looking around they finally found MIT in Stanford and uh they hooked up with them and decided that may maybe hey this is a good idea and we should uh try and spread this around more uh and so the college cryptocurrency network was formed um I guess funny story I'm actually I can't say fourth but I think like fifth or sixth on the line of people that was contacted uh just from the sheer fact that I did some blog writing uh back in the day and uh back in the day if you search Bitcoin Alaska uh my name would come up primarily in the

Google research uh Google search results and uh our co-founder Daniel just happened to be going through the list of states and alphabetical order looking for Bitcoin clubs so so when when uh when you started your first Club in Alaska were there any other clubs uh uh in Alaska or were you the only one at that time so funny story about that I'm actually still working on my paperwork it's been kind of overwhelming with the uh who's trying to get my uh what my thesis work done but um yeah it's been from the faculty and whatnot have reached out to

as far as sponsorship for that sort of thing it's been real nice uh we're definitely in the going to be the only Club up here in Alaska because there's only three colleges primarily University of Alaska Fairbanks Anchorage and Juno and um they're all uh uh and neither the other two have a cryptocurrency club but I'm hoping to establish a real strong Network in Alaska where we can uh reliably um I guess connect and work on projects together considering Alaska is so far apart that it's going to be pretty small projects otherwise so tell us about the types of projects uh that that that are that come out of these cryptocurrency uh groups

you call them clubs yeah I mean they're clubs so as far as like how they operate um every every Club is it is a completely separate entity from the network we just kind of I mean if you want to think about it this way we're kind of like a side chain that operates on top of the blockchain um so they're all the independent clubs actually make things run but we just kind of help connect things together you know add a little bit of additional information bring people together on different ways um to uh elaborate on that on like how the CCN helps the students directly I mean when I was setting up the uh chapter here at the University of Delaware it's uh completely independent of the CCN but uh what the CCN was able to do is I

could go on there find some sample constitutions reference it with my school materials to make sure I covered all the bases um obviously the topics of cryptocurrency in the news like there's some negative viewpoints of it and if people have only heard the negatives they want to have a lot more information on the topic um if you're a student's saying Hey I want to use this cryptocurrency and they've only heard it with drug money they want you to have a lot of extra you know reasoning what you're going to do with it how you're going to explain things and so to be able to balance those ideas with the rest of the network um it would give me materials like other colleges that have already set up uh the different clubs and they've gave me like resources so you can easily research it so just kind of streamline the entire

process so my focus was entirely with the organization and they kind of helped me get all the resources together in the back end foreign a couple years ago I was involved with an organization called Toastmasters and where basically you create these clubs and you learn how to do public speaking and Leadership skills and things like that and they although it's not decentralized it is a very Central organization that has a lot of money and a lot of resources uh what they provide is you know the the kit basically the um all the tools and resources which allow anybody just to create a club and it sounds to me like there's a sort of a similar model where the college cryptocurrency network will offer the

tools and resources to the universities and then it is up to them really and perhaps where it differs from from the Toastmaster model is they really have the freedom and the Liberty to kind of operate their Club how they wish yeah I mean you you basically got it spot on there I mean we're just going to provide any extra resources to help smooth things over um if they need you know some extra opinions on stuff we're always here to help with that um we're trying to we're kind of launching a design movement so we've got a design team going to help design logos and stuff that uh Dean and I are hoping head up um that are going to help clean up you know School logos because you know let's be honest not everyone's a graphic designer no I'm not so um you know to have to have that sort of

help when needed is absolutely great um we always offer to uh uh I at least I always offer to uh to contact uh Administration and stuff like that if need be to talk to them to kind of help a sage any fears about uh you know Bitcoin being you know horrible stuff and all that uh you know because like Dean said there is that kind of negative perception with a lot of people and we just got to do what we can to kind of fight against that show that hey we're out there just trying to educate people and get people involved we're not trying to you know get people to sell drugs it's just a good old education yeah I suppose that might come up on University campus is the cryptocurrency club is going to be using those Bitcoins the

laundry money and sell drugs to freshman do you have to make a clear up or distinguish yourself from the sensationalized news headlines so let me let me ask you what's the landscape like now how many clubs are there in the US and in other places around the world so um the number kind of is a little hazy just with how many people we were waiting to get response back from but it's about 100 every week yeah yeah it's about 115 chapters right now um all over the globe uh every continent that's inhabited um from Hong Kong to uh Australia uh to you know tons of clubs here in the US to South America uh quite a few of them were in Germany we're gonna send an ATM

to uh Antarctica to hopefully get that last one as well yeah I mean uh we've got uh we've got our uh the uh chapters everywhere and uh they've been uh a lot some of them have been really nice and active um I know that uh some of our some of the German students uh over at the and I'm not I'm not going to try and announce uh pronounce the name just because I know I'll butcher it but one of our Journal universities is um been doing just absolutely phenomenal stuff a lot of them are writing uh research articles on uh you know their own topics or cryptocurrency topics and uh one of them helps with the Dogecoin foundation

and uh stuff like that I mean just super active individuals that are you know just a really great to see be involved and um really great to you know actually be able to hang out and get to know these people that's good ideas from everyone when someone else is doing something cool it's nice to see if you can adopt that model and bring it somewhere locally so once someone kind of breaks the ice it's kind of easier for everyone else to copy and do the same thing too which is what we want to encourage okay so how do you so I guess you I guess you learned from you know what certain clubs are doing and then you'll use that uh that that'll come trip back up to the top and then you'll use that again exactly update the the the resource material that you

provide to new clubs it's very easy to sell an idea when it's already been done and there's tons of resources on it and you can just link to a bunch of things and say look how amazing it worked out for that campus we could do something similar to on our campus and it just kind of uh gets the ball rolling yeah so I mean like uh I'm I assume you've seen and I assume at least some of your uh your followers have seen the uh Georgia Tech uh branded Bitcoin wallet that's uh been talked about lately and um oh you haven't oh okay well um Georgia Tech is do you do you know if they're working on it I think they're working on it they've been implemented with their point system like uh so they're in school kind of like payment systems like I know at my school there's

like a this one called Flex you load dollars into your card and you can use it at the gift shops and uh any like the school related places on campus and I think they have a similar system set up where you can deposit Bitcoins and it comes out as the US dollar amount onto your card um right there I mean good pay I think you just put it in and then it comes out as a dollar amount but yeah yeah and they're working on integrating that right now and I think it's absolutely phenomenal that's probably one of my favorite projects I've seen coming out of a school in a long time just because that's the sets the precedent for having so many other schools get involved like that and say hey uh you know why not if we can just convert it over to dollars

but students put on their card I mean it's already going to be the universe University's money anyway I mean they're really not losing anything so uh why not give them the option if they so choose to you know put other money in uh it's a great way to experiment with the technology in like a realistic way so that students they say oh what's Bitcoin let me just give it a test run little things like that make all the difference yeah can you kind of give me an idea of what these clubs look like I mean I guess they're probably all very different but can it kind of give me yeah they actually uh they are very different between different clubs some of them are more uh really casual just meet ups mostly and so they just kind of agree a bunch of people agree to meet up

at a certain location and uh just talk Bitcoin for a few hours I guess I don't even know it's that long but uh and then other clubs I know at uh like Penn State University uh Patrick science is heading that up and they do uh a lot of cool things like they do a nice lectures explain the technology but also they have interviews I think with uh people coming around and they want to do like charity events with like their big Thon uh agenda and they're using that to kind of integrate Bitcoin with more school stuff but kind of going in that charity focus and um every Pat always comes up with details every every day so I'm sure I'm already outdated but uh little things like that you can go as small as really casual meetups to trying to change the university with Bitcoin or

cryptocurrencies um and what's the what's the largest Club the largest gaming idea I don't know is that a uh I think it's 10th Street uh Penn State is pretty big yeah those are probably our biggest ones um Michigan yeah I don't know any accurate numbers yeah I don't want to leave anyone out who's big and it's not mean or anything but everyone's doing great stuff regardless how big or small yeah I know at least a couple of the clubs have like a hundred student plus uh mailing lists I I can say that much with relative confidence so wow so it's nice to see that kind of

support on on the campuses at least um although it could be much better than that I I I I need to get some updates from people and tell me what kind of projects have you seen come out of these clubs I mean have there been any startups that actually uh uh that yeah too many startups just uh really um I I know of at least a couple of our members that regularly participate um that have their own startups uh I know there's at least a few more that I don't know that I'm probably I'm pretty sure at least half of our club heads probably have some sort of crazy idea they want to make into a startup still so

but as a I got some concrete just for you can search on the news I mean MIT has done stuff with their Vic uh that bit competitions and uh I think like the three top winners have each created their own Solutions their own startups they're going to pursue right in New Jersey um going after um Reuben I think and MIT for his project earlier so that was another thing really in the news but uh I think people at Stanford are all I mean obviously the Stanford Community is really into startups um yeah but the thing is with the startups it's not necessarily part of the CCN but uh we help them kind of with the education on campus but it's we love when students do that because that's the whole point getting them to uh build their own skills and see what they can do and contribute to society

and can you give some examples of these uh these startups well one of them was the decentralized identity I think so they were trying to make like a an avatar service um so you can have the same Avatar across the web that's like under your control I know another one was helping you deal with like taxes to help uh go through that um I should have looked in a little bit more closely before I came on here again but uh that was over I think the summer and they had two competitions yeah yeah and of course I mean there's the MIT Bitcoin project um we've got some uh quite a few hackathons we've got going on around the world Texas just had a hackathon a huge turnout I think in Austin yeah I think it just finished up this morning where it's going to finish up this afternoon

depending on I'm getting my time zones mixed it up but sometime today it'll finish up um and uh everything I've heard coming out of there has just been phenomenal uh there's a huge turnout the pictures look great I'd like to kind of go uh because I mean since you're here and perhaps a lot of people listening some people listening might be students and they might want to create a club he walk us through uh sort of you know how do you how do you go about creating a club uh with the cryptocurrency network yeah so this is this is my field of expertise uh as the Director of student Outreach my data day activity is primarily uh consist of uh you know communicating with our new

clubs um helping any new members uh get involved with us get them the resources they need and whatnot but um I kind of went into it a little bit uh when doing an introduction just because that's how second nature it is to me now um basically we have students reach out to us um when they reach out to us we say you know we have a little discussion with them uh usually we try and have a video conference call uh we chat with them we get to know them get to know what they want to do get to know what they want what they need from us and uh we share with them uh all of our resources we can give them um if there are any projects right off the bat that they have going on or want to get going on we see we can put them

in contact with um but then we just try and check up every once in a while uh make sure you know if they're still forming a club it's good things going well if they need us to call anybody speak to anyone Skype into any meetings or anything like that whatever we can do to help and then they get officially recognized as a club the university then can give them funding if they need funding for projects allows them to get officially recognized uh you know for marketing and stuff like that on campus to reach out to the students better to get more people involved to get more people educated uh to get bigger projects going and so on and so forth and then they can just roll however they want to and do

their own thing and are there any requirements I mean does it cost anything are there membership fees like no all three yeah it's all all free um we I mean of course we want to avoid that just because I I mean I think you know I can't speak for you know why there's not but I mean hey I think it'd be a bad taste I mean especially with all the scams and whatnot we we've had in the cryptocurrency sphere I think charging money for something like this that can be done free pretty easily is you know would be a little sour CE in that in that kind of same light the point is also focusing on what the students are doing so the college

cryptocurrency network is nothing without the students who are doing the stuff involved so students who are creating content who are doing cool hackathons will they get the full credit in the college cryptocurrency just makes everyone else aware of it and say hey look what they're doing um a little more than that but so that's also part of that I mean it'll be ridiculous to charge anyone because it's nothing without everyone involved yeah I mean I you know I'll be honest I don't feel like I do a terrible amount day to day but some of these people that we're involved with and some of the clubs we've got going on are just phenomenal just doing stuff every day that just blows my mind as far as how active they are on campus and what kind of support they're getting that I'm honestly quite jealous of considering the you know the

you know the I guess the Bitcoin economy up here in Alaska so you know I'm good on them and I just want to do what I can to help support them I guess perhaps since we have you on uh can you tell us about the Bitcoin uh ecosystem in Alaska um we've never had anybody from Alaska before so our last fall asleep here yeah that's because uh it's basically non-existent I mean you're running the show right just about uh I guess uh to go into a little bit more detail about my story earlier about how they found me um apparently uh Daniel found an article that was written by the Anchorage Daily News which is our our state newspaper about Bitcoin in Alaska and I was one of

the three people interviewed there was a guy who uh I think runs runs the Meetup uh there was a guy who had six figures in mining equipment up there and then there was me who just wrote blogs and was trying to get a club going up in Fairbanks yeah I do mining in Alaska I mean your your hitting bill uh I mean it's you know twofold because you'd get free Heating and then also you can cool your machines for free yeah that that's definitely something people have tried I can't comment on their successfulness but you know that that yet again successfulness and Mining is a whole is kind of questionable so at least nowadays but um yeah I mean uh yeah I think it's

pretty generous to say that there's not much going on up here unfortunately it's not a very uh computer savvy generally State I mean we don't really have any major uh you know computer science schools or anything like that uh University of Alaska Fairbanks is a engineering school which is about as close as we get um and it's a pretty conservative state it doesn't particularly like uh technology um and with the spread in population uh it makes it kind of an uphill battle all around but um I'm trying to see what I can do I actually um I guess to have another little story uh I was going to be on a Bitcoin panel

down at the University of Alaska Anchorage bookstore uh that uh was going to go on um last uh Jesus uh last spring I think um and uh on the way over uh my girlfriend's car broke down so we ended up missing the panel completely uh did not get to participate on that they still had the professor from the University of Alaska Anchorage College who I think was kind of proposing some counterpoints talk a little bit and then um and uh still got to Anchorage eventually unfortunately that was a nice six hour drive but I missed the uh the panel completely so hopefully we'll be able to try and schedule one of those again soon that I can actually participate in

I I know what that what that's like you know I'm from Canada where it's cold and also a lot you know exactly long distances like that kind of thing happened um so I'd like to talk maybe about you know really how how Bitcoin is received on campus so you know the people in these clubs uh are young people they're they're I think they're well generally young people are quite open to change and open to new ideas and destructive disruptive Technologies and whatnot so how aside from you know the people actually in the clubs that are into Bitcoin you know and they they understand it how is Bitcoin received uh by young people on college students

um you know it's kind of it's that kind of a dichotomy you know you got on one side of people that you know have been screwed over by the education uh Finance system I guess how you can put it um with student loans just being near predatory uh you know how much insane amount of money we have to take out every year to you know Finance this stuff working with banks just is always a hassle um and so you show them this and like hey this is a kind of cool alternative where I don't have to deal with the bank anymore because that's always sucked um and uh being able to get uh involved that way and seeing you know this is

different part that allows them to avoid that involvement um and then there's the other side where just you know every day is in the dollar why would I use anything else why would I want to be involved with anything that's not the dollar that's just going to make things complicated or this doesn't make sense you know why would I want this and then those are the ones that you really have to sell on the concept to say like no like trust me this is actually a lot simpler than a lot of this stuff you know it would it would be really beneficial I know Dean do you want to say anything yeah so I mean I think with the students on campus it's exactly what you said some of them who know what it is I mean they love it ever they're eating it up

and there's another group that I think is a large percentage of students who still don't really know what it is they've heard this in the news but uh if you explain the concepts and you show them demonstrations I think a lot of them just get it I mean like we've I've been using a bank account far less than I've been using Bitcoin I mean it's just and it's more familiar to me I mean it's on my it's on my phone it's very relatable technology wise instead of going to like a bank office and talking with someone about this kind of policies I'm not really familiar with and uh the more I do Global work I mean with the CCN it's a global Community I mean doing that kind of work without this kind of Global Currency just wouldn't work as well there'd be much more friction much

more obstacle points I think our generation we use you know video chat to talk with our friends across the entire world we do a lot of things with social networking just keep up with each other wherever we are and the money that kind of follows that same motive is much more familiar than you know what our policies and governments are doing right now I think They Don't Really represent the interests of the youth right now and Bitcoin is something where if you can kind of Express that like a different paradigm shift that we're more familiar with that's my opinion on that right so the the idea of paradigm shift that I think is really interesting and this is something that we discussed at the conference uh in Brussels on on Fridays now there is a paradigm shift in the technology but there's also a paradigm

shift that they can mentalities right so the idea that uh that you'd want to build this sort of centralized Corporation with like tentacles uh everywhere and and and really with lots of control and Monopoly and and with unethical practices I think I mean I'd like to think that there's some sort of a paradigm shift in the way that people think I think that's brought on in a lot of ways by the proximity that the internet has provided like we can now see and be empathetic to other people around the world whereas before it was a lot harder to be empathetic and to to to to have direct communication with other people um especially for from far away so can you comment on yeah I think that's a

great Point Bitcoin and or decentralized Technologies and cryptocurrencies and young people you know in their 20s you know just in the formative years uh how well how how they can uh adopt that technology and then really take it Forward well like as you just said I mean uh it makes us more empathetic to the people around us and I think that's a very important point because I don't think it's ever going to happen again in history where one nation can wage war against another without propaganda to paint the other people as some kind of inhuman sticks I mean I'm more connected with the kids in Hong Kong and the Arab Spring and what they're doing than uh what my government's doing and I feel like I'm more connected with their efforts because I can communicate with them directly I can read their posts on social media on a live feed and you can

kind of feel if that were to happen in my proximity I would probably want their support as well and it just kind of brings on a global consensus of uh students or young people together that aren't really separated by borders I don't feel separated from someone from around the world just because you know they were born there feel like we can all work together in this kind of global Community now that we have something like the internet to do so and uh Bitcoin so I think that's kind of continuing on that paradigm shift I mean we don't really need this structure where we're from to Define what we're allowed to do and what we can do and we're much more independent as a I think our generation is much more independent because of the tools we have now we can do much more than anything before with

our phones it's amazing yeah I mean my my my major is Political Science so I can go on for days about the state and you know how arbitrary country lines are and stuff like that but I think really what the best thing is is um that the internet I mean young people today are so integrated with the internet now you know like everything we have to do is on the internet I know half the stuff had to do for college even with interacting with the college is online now um I know just about everything I do to communicate with uh a lot of my close friends is on the internet now um and really to introduce a currency that exists only online I think really makes sense for you know

for Young People Like Us that do operate so much on the internet that you know even you know it's an internet money but it's also super easy to use in person in public uh it it's a natural Progressive it's backed by Concepts that we understand I mean probability math all those things aren't as convoluted or opaque as something like the government monetary systems and something that's more transparent allows more involvement is obviously more attractive when you're explaining this to young people when you're explaining this to students that are that are not necessarily you know in the Bitcoin system but they're just college students and they're maybe curious about it what are the type of questions that they have what are they mostly interested in

technical aspects in the Practical aspects and the political or societal aspects um I don't know as far as the questions I usually get um I think 98 of them are usually practical like why should I use this what can I use this with um you know uh you know what what kind of usage they can get out of it you know what what are the pros and cons to them using it versus actually trying to understand the technical aspects because I can you know we can go on all day about you know how it works and how the encryption algorithms and all this work together to help form secure network with the mining algorithms and how the blocks come together to you know help

hold the transactions and all this stuff but to be honest most people don't give a like most people they're perfectly fine with going yeah the nerds say it work and it's it's real it and it's real easy to use so the demonstration is all you need I mean like people ask like what can you use it for and then I whip up my phone and then I say like sometimes I even use Twitter I'll use a service to send Bitcoin over Twitter and that always blows them away too I mean just getting a couple demonstrations that show like how programmable money can be used practically I mean with like storage coming out with like selling out your hard drive space um open Bazaar is coming out we can maybe sell textbooks or tickets to concerts on you know remove scalp little things like that just kind of like come

into mind when you reveal these technologies that are being built I think it's a lot easier for people our age to get their heads around that and once they kind of see this new applications coming out they're much more receptive to it and they don't really ask the questions like like oh what is money I mean they're not really as concerned about that if they can let them do what they want to do like interact on the web in a a social way yeah I mean you'll probably see a little bit sorry I was just going to say that it is uh my a little bit of my political alignment come out here but you know I I just I I take a lot of issue with just how inefficient the banks are as far as

you know how much of a central partner in our lives they are versus uh you know how much power they have over us as far as controlling our money how fast it gets to where it needs to go all this stuff versus Bitcoin which just works because you help participate and works because the people say it should not because you've got some big greedy you know fat cat CEO sitting at the top saying yeah we'll you know it's like two days to process you know it's it works because it works as fast as it can and we're constantly trying to work to improve it the the you know there's nothing better than that knowing there's Improvement trying to be uh done than having the banks and whatnot sit there

and go yeah it's getting there as fast as we can when you know everyone knows good and well that it could easily be there in five seconds I mean to expand on that I mean we use technology that it's like uh grow every year I mean like I think Snapchat didn't exist a few years ago and yet people use it all the time now Instagram Facebook all these things we use like every single year look dramatically different so why should our money systems look like they did from the 1950s I mean credit cards you can't send it over the internet without it becoming insecure that's inherently silly I mean why would we use a technology that's not built for it instead of building a technology that's meant net instead what we've done is made an insurance system to make it not affect people but then we just end up

paying a premium on a shirt on an insurance which is like an unlimited Band-Aid fix and I think it's time to kind of make this uh globally compatible instead of trying to have these Band-Aid Solutions of insurance companies trying to back up a credit card system that's just not meant for the internet anymore and how receptive uh uh uh college students to that to the idea that the banking system is broken because I mean when I was in in in University a couple years ago and I have no idea how the banking system worked I mean I just used it so are they sense yeah I think the 2008 financial crisis definitely struck a tone where people are now very much aware of how uh our system is set up and how there's not

really any fixes done to like change what's going to happen I mean so what happened in 2008 we haven't done much changes to uh make sure that won't happen again and uh a lot of people are kind of aware and we want to have a different approach now because if it happened in 2008 what's going to stop it from happening again um after all the horrible things that happened all the students are very aware we have like drop out looks that aren't as great as our parents had and uh we have to kind of see how we can do that for ourselves now instead of just trying to patch up a system that is not catering to us I mean not like the banks are evolving to make mobile apps or doing things to make our lives easier or make it cheaper to send money across the

world no I mean I have to pay like minimum amounts if I hold a basic balance in my bank account if I have to use an ATM it costs 250 all these little things to use my money like nickeling and diming me over technology I can have a video chat with someone across the world for free and I mean we're doing that right now I mean it's just a totally different Paradigm what we use every single day and it's totally different from the way we use money so it's just like for me it's just not even a A New Concept it's just kind of like upgrading what we should already be using so I'm curious um I was just gonna say uh I I think as far as how receptive they are to you know at least uh the banking industry being broken it it kind of depends on

how well it's been working for them you know I mean most people go if it ain't broke don't fix it and if it's working for them then it ain't broke so uh it just kind of depends on what what they've been involved in like I know I've I've had struggles with getting Collegiate loans and things like that I'm a self um uh self-funded uh collegiate career I haven't really been able to get any money so far from uh my parents not that they haven't tried but um uh it's it's all been me trying to get money from the banks and through scholarships and stuff like that it's just been a pain I mean it's always just been a hassle and things like that and you know dealing with the bank accounts and stuff like

that trying to transfer money between them being unnecessarily complicated trying to send money anywhere it's just ridiculously weird it's just too complicated and you always have to give out your identity to do anything it just it it's really weird in a in a time of uh you know on time of Technology where you can just go make burner accounts for any website you go into basically anonymize where you're from and be just about completely Anonymous with what you're doing on the internet except for when you have to purchase things because of course you have to give out every single detail of your information then all right so I'm curious how are the universities taken to this if the students are quite open to it and

the students understand the concepts and the students are sensitive to to the to the concepts which support sort of Bitcoin ideologically how are the universities responding to it all over all they have reactions all over we see you know at MIT they're really MIT and also PSU they're really uh taking it on board they're really happy to see what the students are doing uh my school they're pretty neutral if not a bit tentative they're not against it and they're happy to see what we can do with it I've talked to faculty and they're happy with it but I mean they're not really like on board as a university but they're totally happy that we're doing as a campus group and then also on the far other end of the Spectrum in New Jersey they have problems with them completely not letting them do it at all

so it's really all over I think so yeah I think that they're having problems with that um and so they're just problems all over not problems all over but there's a spectrum all over of uh how University responding to and I think it really just depends on the individual Administration right and perhaps even like I mean the state uh where it's in and and right well I mean even um in Delaware we have uh Senator Tom Carper and he's been leading the efforts on digital currency uh and I've reached out to him a few times but uh even still at the university has been pretty neutrally tentative which I mean is understandable considering um if they're not dealing with cryptocurrency they don't underwear oh I'm not aware of all the opportunities they can present so well we're here to change that so perhaps this is a good segue into a

partnership that you recently I guess a few months ago sealed with corn academy can you tell us more about that yeah so um that's actually a pretty recent development as far as when we announced it I think it was about two two and a half weeks ago now okay and uh yeah it's just a real solid partnership because uh coinacademy.co is uh basically internet-based lectures they try and get those out there on basic concepts of Bitcoin uh some of the more advanced concepts trying to educate people in simple lecture style format um you know and try and put that out there for people to just use and so uh you know that lines up with our ideas

about Bitcoin uh education and advocacy perfectly um so I think I think it was a real real good idea on our part um it plays into what we want to do which is you know get lectures set up that people can play off of or use for their own uh needs or whatever it is or even use them lecturers at their own clubs and build workshops so coin Academy just describe what it is oh yeah we'll go ahead Jacob um well coin Academy is um a it's a series I will not a series uh it's a

site that has a bunch of different uh lecture Styles um it's got collections of courses it's got uh uh on all sorts of Bitcoin related topics um looking at the page right now or uh Khan Academy or something like that kind of similar to that um so it's got a collection of uh of um lectures on uh digital currencies and social activism it's got a lecture on the introduction to digital currencies uh digital currency ownership Bitcoin for merchants um it's got all these uh lectures on all sorts of topics and they're all done uh

by their team um trying to help uh educate people um it's all free uh and it's it's that same sort of digital idea that this information should be out there we don't want to charge money for it we just want to have it out there educate people and you know the making money can come later however it happens like that that's not the important part the important part is getting people involved because that's that's what we need for this to be successful because honestly the technology isn't too difficult to understand once you kind of start using a little bit I think the Practical workshops that show how the technology Works um kind of take away the mystery from it and people feel a lot more comfortable investigating it instead of just hearing about this cryptocurrency

um it sounds much more techy that way except when you have these videos it helps you realize it's just another computer application something you're familiar with already so what's the long-term uh where do you see this partnership going I mean we can't comment on anything specific because honestly I don't know um but I mean I just love to see us continue to Foster uh these these lectures to try and make sure that we help them grow uh to get this information out there and hopefully we can see I mean I I think it's no secret that we want to see you know Bitcoin Academia become you know an actual

subject around a lot of these colleges so which it already is and a few I think I think that the colleges already have this going on yeah I'm more of these um colleges so I think um I don't know if they'd be able to help or you know if we want to if it'd be on our own doing but uh just being able to make sure we can uh establish networks to uh to help Foster Bitcoin Academia would just be phenomenal just because that that's one of our end goals is to make sure that Bitcoin research and whatnot can go on the Bitcoin uh studies can go on an average college environment because that's our that's our system's way of fostering knowledge which is by

going to the Collegiate atmosphere and studying in those ways so right do you think that um perhaps perhaps universities and colleges where people are these mentalities are usually quite open and and liberal in that sense uh hey do you think that um this is an environment that can foster some sort of mass adoption of Bitcoin whatever that means I mean kind of throw away this town this term Mass adoption and if it is what is the kind of key to what what do you think is holding it back or where's the key to sort of you know spreading uh Bitcoin through

through universities and colleges I mean I guess we'll see with a little bit with the MIT Bitcoin drop coming up um I mean that that'll be kind of a big foray into that uh as far as uh college is being kind of the push for Mass adoption um I mean I think it very well could be uh it just kind of just depends on the responsiveness of the students to the technology um them recognizing the opportunities it holds and then them creating ways to create value for themselves because ultimately it kind of seems obvious to me right I mean because you've got a place with uh with uh really creative people okay with who are kind of open and you know opening

their minds and everything and then also use money and need money and exchange money between uh among each other and also receive money from like their parents or something like that and um and this is very small kind of closed ecosystem so it seems to me like it's sort of the ideal place for for for Bitcoin Mass adoption to occurred or at least to uh uh to seed from I mean like as yeah like it's a very the technology itself I don't think anyone would really hear the concepts of it and say oh that's wrong like the government should be controlled the money they I mean I don't think when you explain how it works and it being math-based and all the individual Concepts no one's really against it so if it's all we have if we only have to do education to kind of

reveal what this technology is I mean that's an awesome opportunity for us to kind of be just talking about it and then in that kind of makes people more attentive to it because the actual technology is the selling point we're just kind of revealing what it is through education and academic insight and little projects here and there to show it being used in application not just theoreticals um so Jacob you said earlier that you wanted to talk about uh some of your experiences at conferences lately can you uh yeah I mean uh I know uh college cryptocurrency network has really allowed me to actually get to a lot of these um uh I just went to uh coins in the Kingdom which was put on by Sean's Outpost not uh not long ago with Dean

here and a couple of the other guys and um that it was a phenomenal time I mean uh it was a really well received conference uh it was at uh Disney World um and uh it was a lot of fun it really kind of showed what you can do with a kind of a small setup for a conference while still making it really effective by having a lot of good talks and uh having uh having a lot of fun there I mean uh Jason Jason he was awesome I mean with this going to Disney hangout with developers just standing in line with like people who are really into Bitcoin talking about it on the wait is just incredible I mean at Disneyland exactly Disney World yeah yeah I mean uh we got to do a uh there was a charity

poker tournament uh the first night for uh to benefit uh Sean's Outpost and that was a ton of fun everyone had a great time everyone just cheering each other on having fun discussing some you know Bitcoin and their own projects in the side while playing I mean it's really really nice to see that that sort of environment come together um and it's cool thank business partners uh and big businessy people with other community members and college students and like no matter what you're from as long as you're kind of in this ecosystem everyone's just kind of willing to help each other out see what you're up to and see if there's any a possibility for everyone to get involved and it's just like uh it's so energizing to see that kind of support yeah I mean it's been my experience in

conferences as well I always come out of it sort of with uh it's just enthusiasm you know exactly you meet all these people that are all very interesting and all doing very interesting things and you come back out of it with so many ideas and everything so exactly I mean it's impossible not to be someone repetitive in terms of some talks and speakers and things like that I'm always uh yeah yeah I always come come back with a whole lot of ideas as sort of a renewed optimism everything's possible almost like uh the projects that you think you might work on if you see other people doing other

things you're like oh well that's no big deal I can just start launching this now I've got a dick if I cut you off oh that's fine I was just gonna say it's it's hard to come out of that sort of environment with that sort of people and not feel excited for everything and to be you know not be like oh you know just sitting there chatting with them and all of a sudden you start vamping about an idea and then all of a sudden you're like oh no we could totally do that we just use you know so and so's product and then we uh we develop a little bit on our end we make sure we you know try and integrate this and uh you know the system will be pretty simple to set up and you know all of a sudden you've got

a half a business plan going and you know it's impossible for some of the stuff not to happen and it's just it's so so exciting to be a part of that you know sit there and see that happen and you know even if you're not involved it's hard not to be happy for them be like yeah that's a cool product I want to get involved or you know I want to help you out or however you want to do it so we're going to wrap up uh here in a few minutes but you know before we do I'd like to sort of get your long your vision of what the long-term objective is here with the college cryptocurrency network um what where would you like how would you like it to see evolve and I guess the other question I have is um as students are in college and then they

come out of college what uh what sort of experience and what kind of knowledge and what can what will they be able to bring to the Bitcoin community and how how will they be able to affect the growth of the ecosystem of coming out of college yeah so um I mean as far as my view goes um I really like our Mantra the the education uh Innovation and advocacy um I mean long-term goal of course is to educate people we just want to get people in the know about this stuff even if they don't want to use it even if they think it's kind of silly just get in their head say hey this is the thing we think it's really great um you don't have to think it's really

great but it's a thing it's always an option and it's out there and we're making it better every day um and of course to Foster The Innovation we've I love seeing these new products like these new products and projects like I it it makes me just insanely excited to see some of this stuff happening that we do have uh just because it's uh I mean of course it's not actually out there but in the context of you know our you know what today today is like it's so crazy to think like five years ago like you would have said this and people were gone what there's no way that that is ever gonna happen like that that's just insane I regularly send money over like Reddit and Twitter using change tip little

things like that and I'm excited to start using storage to like have better uh cloud storage and stuff like that and use open Bazaar to see what the possibility of that for like magic cards and it's like there's literally like an endless ability of things you can do and just so exciting having Bitcoin even if you don't have Bitcoin just being involved in the news and seeing what's going to be available in like a month it's like oh that's never existed next month we can try it out and it happens like constantly there's new products being released all the time so it's just so much fun and as far as uh you know as students leave College what what they can bring uh and you know what what we can give to them um I mean we're we're currently trying to get up a system uh where these

companies uh you know our partners and whatnot uh can communicate with these students um and say hey we've got positions available like we want a source from the Bitcoin Community especially say the young ones that are actively being educated actively learning and really really want to be a part of all this stuff and encourage that because I mean hey that's the best for the companies B that's the best for us and C that's the best for the guys that want to be involved I mean that and for everyone involved the kids are getting involved in Bitcoin or Bitcoin startups and Bitcoin companies and they're going to be able to lead the way and hopefully someone will be the lucky few that become the next big companies the big Bitcoin companies would have

nothing but an interest uh to to fund you guys right to to support you guys financially because you guys are you guys are creating the new I mean the future entrepreneurs developers and and economists that are going to be working in this field yeah I mean that's yeah that's right and we just wanna we just want to encourage these students to get out there and get involved and um I mean if we can kind of uh I don't want to say reward but it's the only word to come to mind if we can reward their activation activity and participation with you know like hey there's some job opportunities hey there's this internship you know great like we've given in more opportunities

what was that thing I said we reward their participation with like reputation you know if you make yourself known and then obviously they're going to start contacting you if you're the person doing amazing things yeah well uh it was really interesting to talk to you guys guys I mean it I think it's the first time that we had a non-profit on and uh and and also I think you know we often talk to entrepreneurs and and people building things but you know the education part doesn't get talked about a lot and I think Bitcoin education is something that um that I'm that I think is quite important I mean obviously this podcast is part of you know my uh desire to you know educate people about Bitcoin I also

run a Bitcoin Meetup here indeed Brian runs the Bitcoin Meetup in in Berlin so education is something that's that's close to me and uh I think that you know taking it to a very large scale like you guys are trying to do and really targeting the people that uh the right people you know these are the people that are going to be uh working in their in an industry in our economy tomorrow so uh you know good job and good to see you guys for doing that um where can we find you um how can people get involved how can people uh get involved with college cryptocurrency network so you want to go to um if you want to check out College crypto on the web uh you go to collegecrypto.org

um there you'll find our website it's got our membership form uh if you're an interested student if you know an interested Student please direct them there um I'll see that they've signed up and get in contact with them as soon as possible um you can reach me if you want to send me an email about anything Jacob collegecrypto.org obviously you can find me on Twitter at totally geeky if you want to message me that way uh yeah and the college group at College crypto on Twitter is our official Twitter handle and so just on the website um I create an account and I'm logged in here there's a forum uh there's some resources and there's even the job

center uh Power by finality but uh so there are all the resources there and then there's a calendar where I suppose people will be able to uh post meetups and things like that I guess and also once you get involved there's like other things we do like we send out the Weekly Newsletter and uh as we said earlier we do like the uh the design we got a bunch of students from different colleges who are interested in putting out some social media we had a group hang out with them and we kind of see how people want to get involved so it's a a lot of all all the above right if you're interested also just at all at College crypto there's a sign up for our newsletter which I put together weekly um on our website on collegecrypto.org so yeah if you go to

collegecript.gov.org and you go down uh you'll see their click here to sign up for the newsletter and you can sign up well thanks a lot guys and by the way Brian just came on kind of Midway through did one of you know because it didn't have his mic equipment with him but uh has some questions and so you answer some of them and he says Kate with the great work um so thanks a lot for coming on thanks for listening uh if you want to follow us on Twitter we're at epicenter BTC you can also support the show by uh giving us a review on iTunes so you go to iTunes for Epson or Bitcoin that helps us in the uh finding new listeners and uh being ranked in iTunes and you can

also you know support the show by sending us a tip at epicenterbitcoin.com tips and don't forget to sign up for the newsletter Brian said so every Friday and it's always very very informative a great way to keep up with the latest stories and the most important stories that happen every week and you can do that at Epson bitcoin.com newsletter so thanks again for listening and we'll look forward to being back later this week and in fact on Thursday we'll have uh we'll be posting a a panel discussion that I did with uh Richard catano and Jeremy Gardner the executive director of college crypto uh at episode BTC it was really interesting to talk to those guys about the types of um the types of products that we should be focusing on building and and then how we can Market

that to uh to to the Masters in order to sort of create a a mass adoption so uh that'll be on Thursday and we'll be looking we'll be back uh next Sunday with a new Google Hangout foreign thanks for having us on man this is great looking forward to being back next week