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@ 000290e1:b4909c87
2025-04-06 03:12:01
<p>Back in 2014, Jeremy Rubin, a sophomore at MIT studying computer science and electrical engineering, had a bold idea: give every undergraduate student $100 worth of bitcoin.</p><p>Seven months later, armed with $500,000 in donations from alumni and crypto enthusiasts, Rubin made it happen. A total of 3,108 students took him up on the offer — at a time when bitcoin was trading at around $336.</p><p>Had everyone held onto their bitcoin, the collective value of the “MIT Airdrop” would have reached approximately <strong>$44.1 million</strong> at today’s prices. But not everyone HODLed.</p><p>According to researchers including Christian Catalini — now co-creator of the Diem stablecoin project once initiated by Facebook — about 1 in 10 students cashed out within two weeks. By the time the experiment ended in 2017, 1 in 4 had sold their crypto. After that, the team stopped tracking the cohort’s transactions.</p><p>Some students spent their bitcoin in more... flavorful ways.</p><p>Van Phu, now a software engineer and co-founder of crypto brokerage Floating Point Group, regrets blowing his bitcoin on sushi.</p><p> “One of the worst and best things at MIT was this restaurant called Thelonious Monkfish,” said Phu. “I spent a lot of my crypto buying sushi.”</p><p>He wasn’t alone.</p><p> Quantitative trader Sam Trabucco, also part of the experiment, estimated that half the students he knew spent their bitcoin at the same restaurant — the only place in Cambridge accepting bitcoin at the time. The spot has since rebranded and stopped accepting crypto.</p><h3><br></h3><h3>The Birth of the Experiment</h3><p>Rubin got the idea for the bitcoin giveaway in the middle of a legal battle with the New Jersey attorney general, who had accused him of being a “hardcore cybercriminal.” The claim stemmed from Rubin’s creation of <strong>Tidbit</strong>, a bitcoin mining program that had recently won an innovation award at a hackathon.</p><p>Though the case was eventually dropped and Rubin cleared, the experience highlighted how little even his MIT peers knew about bitcoin.</p><p> “I thought, ‘This is MIT — everyone’s supposed to be super cutting-edge.’ But bitcoin just wasn’t widely understood,” Rubin recalled.</p><p>Determined to change that, Rubin partnered with Dan Elitzer, then an MBA student at MIT Sloan. In October 2014, they launched the experiment. Students had to complete a short series of questionnaires and review educational materials before claiming their $100 in bitcoin.</p><p>And with that, the great MIT Bitcoin Experiment was born — part tech education, part economic study, and part sushi-fueled cautionary tale.</p>