New York University, a prestigious college found in 1831, has started to offer the first crypto major course in the US.

 

Adjunct professor Andrew Hinkes told CBS New York in an interview that the institution is helping students understand both the legal and the business implications of crypto and blockchain technology.

Hinkes said:

 

“We hope to establish a groundwork so that the students can understand what’s really happening under the hood, so that they can understand both the legal and the business implications, and prepare them to go out and tackle this new market.”

Crypto Boom at Universities

Throughout 2018, the demand for crypto-related courses at colleges has increased significantly, ever since prestigious institutions like Stanford and MIT started offering programs covering cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

 

As Mustafa Khan, a student at NYU who enrolled in the crypto major, it has become important for millennials to understand and study an emerging asset class that is rapidly integrating into the global finance sector.

“In the environment we live in today, it’s become especially relevant to get a hold of how new technologies work and how they interact with the legal system,” Khan said.

David Yermack, finance department chair at NYU, stated that students who previously graduated at the college have come back to take crypto courses to obtain a better understanding of the rapidly growing market and the industry surrounding blockchain technology.

 

“There’s a few people who graduated some years ago but have come back to sit in on this just because of the novelty and the edginess of the topic,” Yermack added.

Similar Movement in Institutional Market

 

Influenced by the initial entrance of Goldman Sachs into the cryptocurrency sector through Bitcoin futures clearance, an increasing number of major banks have started to develop crypto custodian solutions to serve institutional investors.

Banks are required to adjust to the demands of its clients and consumers and as such, depending on the trend of the market and the needs of investors, banks tend to add more lucrative services onto their existing range of products to ensure that it can facilitate the interest towards new asset classes and markets from investors.

According to Coinbase vice president Adam White, the education industry has seen a similar trend, as students began to ask universities to offer education on a new industry that is seeing similar levels of interest and developer activity as the Internet in its early days

“This is a grassroots movement. These are students saying, ‘hey, university, I want to take a class on this.’ I think they see the development, the birth of a new industry. In many ways, we look at things like Bitcoin and Ethereum and blockchain as the internet 3.0,” White said.

The integration of crypto and blockchain technology into New York Unviersity’s major courses is expected to lead to other prestigious and well recognized institutions in the US offering similar programs.

Images from Shutterstock

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