This is an opinion piece by Phil Snyder, professor, video director and editor.
When I first developed my Bitcoin course at the University of Houston, I felt a bit like Dr. Albert Schweitzer landing on land in Equatorial Africa in 1913. I had my trusty black bag full of orange pills, but I didn’t had no idea if any of the natives would. swallow what I prescribed. Then there was that obligatory rabbit hole to dig first, so they had a place to go for the required harrowing fall. As with any missionary effort, the first imperative is to establish a beachhead by rallying tribal leaders. In my case, it would be the coordinator of the digital media program and the head of our department at the College of Technology.
But before sticking my neck out, I needed to see if any other Bitcoin missionaries had gone before me. I was amazed to discover that as of fall 2020, there was not a single accredited Bitcoin course in the entire university system – not even in computer engineering or the College of Business. The only higher education course I could find at the time was Gary Gensler’s (now SEC Chairman) 2018 offering at MIT, which has millions of views on YouTube. So it’s not like there isn’t a market for it. A recently published survey found that two-thirds of parents and college graduates who understand and are interested in cryptocurrencies believe the subject should be required in schools. Frankly, as a non-tenured teaching associate professor whose job it was to teach film, video and animation, I was not keen on taking on an additional burden of this magnitude and risk, but I finally complied with what my conscience insisted was my fiduciary duty.
I’m going to skip the parts of that missionary metaphor about dodging poison darts, even though there were a few. After receiving permission to teach the course, we created a flyer to circulate among future college students. I was photographed holding one of these never-before-seen representations of a “bitcoin”, offering it as an incentive for students to enroll. My boss sent it out to a few hundred students, stating that I would give each enrollee a bitcoin! You’re right if you assume he didn’t understand the basics. There were a few students who knew enough to say it had to be a joke, and I was glad I wasn’t being sued for false advertising. Soon after, my boss was the first to receive my introductory lecture.
At the time our three-credit course was underway, the rollout of bitcoin in El Salvador as legal tender was in full swing. One of my students was originally from San Salvador and his family back home had first-hand experience of President Nayib Bukele’s bold initiative. My student solemnly voiced his fears and apprehensions and those of his family regarding the top-down nature of its implementation. I repeatedly expressed to him my sincere hope that everything would work out to their great advantage and that he would be able to take what he had learned during the course and put it to good use at home as a new bitcoin evangelist.
As I write this, we are in the third week of the fall semester of 2022. During a lecture, while describing bitcoin’s resistance to confiscation and inflation protection, one of my students said she was from Venezuela and that she and her family had personally experienced the utter devastation caused by the unscrupulous dictator’s unsound money-printing policies. Nicola Maduro. She agreed that small bitcoin miners were finding financial salvation from the disasters around them. I managed to keep my cool, but it was a struggle. The emotion in the class was palpable.
Stories like these are real-world anecdotal evidence of the urgent need for the fantastically far-reaching solution that is Bitcoin. Americans sometimes laugh at our “first world” problems, such as not having a wallet big enough to hold all our fiat, while citizens of developing countries face life and death circumstances that bitcoin can (and is) solving. Yet we are still so far from reaching a critical mass of conversion.
I don’t see myself as being on the front lines of the war on fiat here in my cushy academic work, but I do hope to make a real impact in the fight. As part of our outreach efforts, we’ve partnered with the Texas Blockchain Council and the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce to host popular educational networking events, and we’ll soon be mining bitcoin as a research project with a state. art. ASIC miner and support from Foundry Digital.
As a bitcoiner, you may be experiencing similar feelings to mine a few years ago: my head is exploding with anticipation of bitcoin’s potential for global disruption, but with no idea how, beyond investing , get involved in spreading the gospel. Well, the good news is that you’re already on the right track by educating yourself, which is the first step. You have seen the curiosities here down the rabbit hole – which are getting “more and more curious” – and as you feed your growing curiosity with the magic mushrooms of knowledge expansion, the opportunities will surely appear at every providential link. Whether on the streets of San Salvador or in the checkout line at Costco, you are shaped by an all-knowing, unseen intelligence that loves you and the people you send to the orange pill.
“Of all those to whom much has been given, much will be asked; and to whom they have entrusted much, they will ask all the more. (Jesus in Luke 12:48)
This is a guest post by Phil Snyder. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.