Not to be outdone by Stanford, MIT Media Lab has announced its own course to inspire the “next generation” of bitcoin talent.

Thanks to a partnership between its Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) and Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, MIT will join other universities, including Stanford, putting bitcoin into the classroom.

The Massachusetts university has been a hive of extra-curricular bitcoin activity with contests and events including the MIT Bitcoin Project’s $500,000 giveaway in the currency – $100 for every student on campus.

Arriving next semester, the course is open to all students at MIT and those cross-registered from institutions around the Boston area.

David Shrier, a lecturer at the Media Lab and one of the brains behind the programme, said the course will study topics ranging from e-commerce to market systems.

He added:

“Our course will provide students with a broad perspective on what’s going on, where success and failure has struck, and what the future looks like from various angles.”

It will be lead by serial entrepreneur and famed computer scientist Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland alongside DCI director Brian Forde – an ex-White House advisor hoping to “mainstream” blockchain technology.

MIT Media Lab, which now supports several bitcoin core developers, will also be offering a “highly technical” course around coding the blockchain, Shrier said.

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