Last year, CoinDesk ranked MIT as the top university for blockchain in the United States, and we at the MIT Bitcoin Club are proud to play a role in making MIT a fertile ground for learning and growth in the space.
This year, MIT has covered everything from various Proof of Stake implementations (LCC/Hive, Casper, CBC, ECTO), to decentralized internet replacements (Sia, Blockstack, IPFS, etc), to private browsing (Tor, I2P), to scalability (Lightning and various other side chains, ETH2.0, etc), to zero-knowledge proofs (QAPs, polynomial commitments, SNARKs, even ran a trusted setup).
Beginner-friendly introductory discussions of crypto primitives include hashing, Merkle trees, public key cryptography, signatures, and introductions to specific projects, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
We are student and blockchain-enthusiasts run club, whose mission is to increase the awareness and use of cryptocurrency and to provide forums where blockchain-related ideas, projects, programs, and businesses can be studied, discussed, and developed. The club has also organized the MIT Bitcoin Expo every year since 2014 — a two day conference focused on all things blockchain.
8th Annual Expo
MIT Bitcoin Expo 2021 be held fully online and be completely free to the public. Join on April 3rd and 4th for what will be another exciting round of talks and panels.
Appropriately, the theme last year was Building the Stack, with the focus on the state of the art of the emerging protocol stack. Since then, Bitcoin and Ethereum have reached all-time highs, marking the end of the crypto winter we’ve been in since 2018.
This year, the theme is The New Normal.
First, Guggenheim Partners, Micro Strategy, MassMutual and Tesla have all bought Bitcoin. These are examples of institutional adoption that has changed the narrative around Bitcoin. Further institutional adoption is also coming from the likes of Visa, MasterCard and BNY Mellon.
Second, the explosion of DeFi last year and Robinhood’s trading stoppage of GameStop and other stocks has changed the narrative around Ethereum and DeFi.
Finally, the United States’ Boston Federal reserve partnering with the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative to research central bank digital currencies (CBDC), the Ukrainian government hiring the Stellar Development Foundation to develop their CBDC, and China air-dropping digital yuan to its citizens to test their CBDC has changed the narrative around governmental adoption of cryptocurrencies.
All of this doesn’t even touch the technological advancements made in the field. Taproot has officially been merged into Bitcoin Core, Ethereum 2.0’s Beacon Chain has launched, and many more things have happened this past year that are worth looking into and discussing.
Whether you are new to the space or have been a part of it since the beginning, MIT Bitcoin Expo 2021 welcome everyone around the world to join online.
Speakers include:
- Dan Held, Growth Lead, Kraken
- Jameson Lopp, Founder, Mensa’s Bitcoin Special Interest Group
- Peter McCormack, Creator, What Bitcoin Did Podcast
- John Newbery, Director, Brink
- Rene Pickhardt, Researcher at Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- Michael Saylor, CEO, MicroStrategy
- Jimmy Song, Bitcoin Developer
- Danny Ryan, Research at Ethereum Foundation
- David Vorick, Co-Founder and CEO, Sia
- Pieter Wuille, Engineer, Chaincode Labs
- Gloria Zhao, Bitcoin Core Developer
- Kimberly Grauer, Head of Research, Chainalysis Inc.
- Max Hillebrand, Developer
- Tadge Dryja, Founder & Developer, Lightning Labs
- Bryan Bishop, CTO at Avanti Bank & Trust
Web-site: mitbitcoinexpo.org