In 2014, MIT students Jeremy Rubin and Dan Elitzer conducted an experiment where they gave any interested MIT student $100 worth of Bitcoin, which was then worth roughly $300 a coin. The $100 worth of bitcoin those lucky students received would be worth over $14,000 today.
Rubin, a sophmore studying computer science, was only 19 years old when he got the idea for the project while embroiled in a legal battle with the New Jersey attorney general. Rubin had recently created a bitcoin mining program called Tidbit, and the state believed that his software was actually “installing malware on people’s computers,” according to Rubin.
Although Rubin had won an award for innovation with his project, cryptocurrency was still in a fledgling state in 2014. Bitcoin, especially, was plagued with misunderstandings and negative associations built around its popularity as payment for illegal transactions on the dark web.
But Rubin’s project had no relationship to that world, and although he was eventually cleared by the state of New Jersey, the entire experience left him wondering how Bitcoin could be normalized amongst his peers.
How two MIT students brought Bitcoin to the masses
Rubin teamed up with Dan Elitzer, an MBA student at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. In a matter of months, the two had amassed half a million dollars in donations from MIT alumni and other supporters interested in the promotion of cryptocurrency. Rubin and Elitzer used the funds to offer any interested MIT student $100 dollars worth of bitcoin. A total of 3,108 undergrads participated in the project.