August 17, 2022

Every summer RIT Croatia hosts study abroad programs, attended mostly by students from the US. This year we've run three programs: Ecology of Dalmatian Coast and the Roots to Croatian Wine Tradition (Dubrovnik campus), Psychology program (Zagreb campus), and the newest one - Business administration minor which ran in Zagreb.

One of the courses in the BA minor program is related to Bitcoin, and we've used this opportunity to talk to our professor Schmidt who delivered the class and is a huge Bitcoin aficionado. "Bitcoin is arguably the most significant technological innovation since the Internet", says Dr. Schmidt. "So how could we, as an institute of technology, not immediately jump on the bandwagon? The première of my course was taught this summer to a cohort of American students from the Rochester campus. We first studied how money works, how our current monetary system is under heavy strain due to inherent design faults coupled with a series of crises since 2008. Against this backdrop we studied Bitcoin technology at a very detailed level, including practical workshops handling transactions, using so called wallets, and running nodes."

Dr. Peter Schmidt: "Most people hear about Bitcoin whenever its dollar price booms. I read about it - very superficially - as early as 2013 in The Economist. Monetary theory has always interested me, and this innovation looked fascinating right away, but also hard to understand. From a few short newspaper articles you certainly can't grasp the scope and significance of this innovation. It took me until the next boom 2017 to sit down and read and study the technology in detail. Once you get it, once you can appreciate the elegance and the revolutionary potential of the technology, it becomes fascinating beyond measure and won't let you go -- no matter where the dollar exchange is currently going."

Dr. Peter Schmidt: "Indeed it is confusing until you spend a few dozen hours reading some quality books or articles, or at least watch some hours of expert podcasts. And getting your hands dirty helps, too: You learn a lot faster with a little skin in the game. Pundits on Twitter say once you spent 100 hours studying Bitcoin, you'll never go back.

Explaining Bitcoin "briefly" is essentially pointless -- it would be no more than an invitation for you to do the work of studying it.

Anyways, if you insist, then I'd say Bitcoin is a technological innovation that uses high-end cryptography and energy to create a safe and scarce virtual commodity that has far superior monetary properties than anything we ever had before ... and now you'll need to figure out on your own how this magical feat works.

Bitcoin is hard to explain because any analogies or metaphors we like use in the process are simultaneously as misleading as they are trying to be helpful. There is just nothing in our realm of experience to relate Bitcoin to. Hence the need to study it from first principles -- and to learn about monetary properties in parallel."

Dr. Peter Schmidt: "Bitcoin is by its nature a very interdisciplinary phenomenon! It's a natural fit for economics and business, just as much for information technology. Hence this course will be open to both IT and business students at RIT Croatia.

Students will be able to take this seminar as an elective in any degree program offered by RIT Croatia, and I predict considerable interest from all sides. Most importantly, our students will future-proof their knowledge: I expect that, as adoption progresses, those who have taken the course will be in strong demand as businesses desperately look for qualified personnel able to understand and develop Bitcoin business.

Anyone who has gone through the course will surely continue to dive deeper "into the rabbit hole" and long-term benefit from Bitcoin boosting their career, either in businesses or in IT development. The sky will be the limit once the adoption curve takes off, and students will see that solid Bitcoin know-how pays off as a "get rich slow" scheme over their entire career."