Three months after Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey launched “The Bitcoin Academy,” the first graduates of the pilot are sharing their thoughts on the plan, and it appears that the program is already transitioning to bitcoin.
The academy was first announced in June with the aim of “empowering the community” of Brooklyn, New York, where Jay-Z originally resides.
Jay-Z announcing the event tweeted“The simple goal is to provide people with the tools to build independence for themselves and then for the community around them.”
A bitcoin success story
The 12-week crash course in crypto was eager to get butt on seats and give people a reason to care, even if they didn’t know much about bitcoin before the course started.
Attendees get a free meal every evening they attend and a smartphone with a one-year data plan to help them incorporate the lessons into their real life.
Modules at the Academy include “Career in Crypto” and “Why Decentralization Matters”. For some, the lessons seem to resonate.
“I Thought Bitcoin Was a Scam,” Danny Craft Tollsd The Daily Beast, Following the course, the 56-year-old Brooklyn resident became a bitcoin believer. “I’ve come to find out, you just have to know how to make it work. When you put money in it, you just let it sit there, and you let it grow.”
Upon completion of the course each participant was gifted $1,000 in bitcoin to help them embark on their journey to financial freedom.
Participants were asked what they planned to do with the money. An unknown bachelor expressed an intention to hodl.
“If you take it out, you lose the benefit of having something in the long run,” he said.
not all found yet
While many respondents received the course well and came back with a renewed appreciation of bitcoin and all things decentralized, not everyone in the community was so impressed.
One local resident said that money would be better off in “real stocks” rather than crypto. However it is not clear whether that resident actually attended the course.
“I took the class, but I didn’t really understand much,” said one person who attended.
Following the backlash, Bitcoin Academy aims to learn lessons from its first run and is already thinking about how to improve the “next phase” of the program.
adopt satoshi
According to data collected by Ariel Investments and Charles Schwab, the latter reported by economist25% of Black Americans hold some form of cryptocurrency, compared to 15% of White Americans.
The disparity leaves room for speculation about its cause. For some, the promise of stateless, censorship-resistant money, is what resonates.
At Black Blockchain Summit 2021, bitcoin evangelists, both speakers and attendees, sang in unison from the same hymn sheet. The song was one of liberation and financial freedom.
As demonstrated in emerging markets, the bitcoin narrative is custom-built to appeal to people and communities that feel somehow deprived of the legacy system. This is true in countries with rising inflation, or in states ruled by domineering regimes, and in communities that are marginalized or left behind in some way.
as reported by TimeAttendees of the Black Blockchain Summit conference also wore T-shirts that read, “SATOSHI IS BLACK.”
As Crypto Maxim says, “we are all Satoshis,” and so, as adoption grows, Satoshis are all of us.