Bitcoin Hype – Ushering The Demand For Cryptocurrency Education

It’s hard not to know about the existence of cryptocurrencies these days. According to Statista, as of May 2018 the Bitcoin, which is considered the most popular cryptocurrency, cost $9,142.32 per unit. So it isn’t surprising that many people are looking for the ways to benefit from the crypto boom.

But while almost everyone has heard the words «Bitcoin», «blockchain», and «cryptocurrency» at least once in their lives, this still doesn’t mean that many understand the basic principles of these technologies. At the same time, people do want to understand them, to figure out what exactly the cryptocurrency is and how can they put it to use.

Furthermore, a poor knowledge of cryptocurrency might not have any major impact on the economics and business now, but it definitely will later. While the cryptocurrency is an online technology, this doesn’t mean that it cannot and won’t affect the offline world. Numerous speculations about the integration of the cryptocurrency in the future business processes and financial markets aren’t unrealistic: there’s a big chance that this will happen sooner or later.

However, the population, in general, isn’t familiar with even the basic language behind cryptocurrency now. It could cause a lot of struggles about using the technology in real life as well as increase the risks of the financial losses due to the poor understating of the cryptocurrency when it will be adopted all over the world.

Therefore, it’s understandable that more and more business schools and universities hurry up to launch courses educating their students on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Building a transparent education system that sets out, in plain terms, how cryptocurrency works, is extremely important, especially for developing countries. It is even more crucial to deliver it in a format that allows people not only to understand cryptocurrency better but also to get first hand experience of it.

But does such system exist now? And is it available to everyone, who is willing to learn? Let’s figure this out.

The Demand For Cryptocurrency Courses

The first cryptocurrency class at a major university was launched in 2014 at NYU with the help of David Yermack. It was run by the Stern School of Business and didn’t have many students at first: it started with only a few dozens of them. The most recent course had 230 students. This number is expected to double next year.

As David said, this definitely moved faster than even he expected. The curriculums need to be updated all the time and the interest in the course is growing steadily.

What’s even more impressive is that the people who are interested in understanding cryptocurrencies don’t necessarily come from the financial sector. Not only banks and governments want to learn how to use these technologies; the representatives of the other sectors want to do this as well. They are interested in applying these concepts to their financial area and while an owner of a website like affordable papers might not need to know how to use them, it’s totally different when it comes to the logistics or mining sector.

Sometimes these insights are simply essential to specific projects the businesses are working on. The number of «tokenized assets» is also increased over the past couple of years. The investors on online exchanges started receiving digital receipts that represent their holdings instead of physical assets.

The Challenges Cryptocurrency Education Faces

While the demand is high, many education institutions still struggle to meet it. This market itself could be difficult to analyze in terms of the statistics and the advanced mathematics. The whole idea of cryptocurrency was about creating something totally different, so it’s still hard to work with it using the financial principles.

The lack of teachers is also a problem. While there are plenty of professors with experience in the field, a course that could become both popular and effective would require some well-known guest speakers to participate and share their knowledge. This could be hard to achieve though, as it is still a niche field.

For the existing teachers keeping the pace in a fast-evolving field could be difficult as well. The curriculums often need to be adjusted: the topic that was unheard at all a year ago, now become fresh and important. While the courses should prepare the students for the future, most of the existing ones aren’t focused on the future yet. Furthermore, they might never become this way, as the market is changing and growing at an incredible speed.

Online courses, however, could become a nice alternative, especially for those who aren’t able to enroll in the existing offline courses. While they might not be as in-depth as the courses still in the offer, they could help fill the gap and cover the basics, allowing financial professionals and those who are interested in cryptocurrencies to become more familiar and comfortable with the technology. Furthermore, such courses are usually easier to adapt because they are generally shorter and launch all the time, unlike the university ones.

There aren’t many people in finance, who have the right skills and knowledge to take advantage of the technological progress, to track the changes currently transforming their industry and to present these changes to those, who are interested in mastering new technologies. Furthermore, there are even fewer people who are able to educate not only those with a financial background but everyone else as well about what cryptocurrencies are and how to use them. However, there will definitely be more of them as time goes.

Though cryptocurrencies still remain an unexplored industry for many, some people even manage to master it on their own. This only means that while a challenge is tough, it’s not impossible to complete. So there’s a chance that we’ll see some impressive changes in the cryptocurrency education field in a couple of years.

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