MIT students received free cryptocurrencies 2014 project and now they could have 12,000 euros in bitcoin, will they have sold them?

While a college student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Mary Spanjers was always willing to participate in academic experiments. He liked to follow the investigation firsthand. Compensation, usually in the form of money or food, was an additional incentive. In 2014, he participated in a project that, 7 years later, is still paying off, since, as a gift, he received a third of bitcoin.

MIT's Bitcoin Project allowed all college students on campus to claim fractional ownership of a bitcoin, free of charge. Spanjers, as noted in Bloomberg, asked to participate in the study (and, therefore, receive their piece of bitcoin), along with 3,100 other students: each student had to complete a questionnaire and review an educational brochure, then set up a digital wallet with 100 dollars in bitcoins.

MIT students received free cryptocurrencies 2014 project

Currently, a third of bitcoin is around $ 12,000 (after a few weeks of continuous falls), which means that all students who have maintained them are receiving an interesting performance.

The crux of the matter is precisely how many students kept their bitcoins. 1 in 10 was cashed in the first 2 weeks, and 1 in 4 had already decided to sell their cryptocurrencies when the experiment ended, in 2017, Christian Catalini, an associate professor at MIT who oversaw the study, told Bloomberg. "It went down from $ 100 to $ 50 shortly after the study began, and many people got scared and bought pizza," Spanjers told.

MIT students received free cryptocurrencies 2014 project

The 24-year-old MIT graduate, now a software engineer, had very little knowledge about bitcoin when she participated in MIT's Bitcoin Project. At the time, he explains, he did not check the value of his cryptocurrencies as often, although he needed to move bitcoin several times to new wallets, as previous ones either stopped accepting the cryptocurrency or closed. He now acknowledges”that it's amazing that he sometimes questioned whether it was worth making the effort to switch wallets."

The MIT experiment was created by Dan Elitzer, then an MBA student who had just founded the school's Bitcoin Club, and Jeremy Rubin, a Computer Science student. The goal was to "take a look into the future and see where this technology could go," Elitzer told Bloomberg. He currently heads cryptocurrency investment firm Nascent, while Rubin is the CEO of Judica Inc, a bitcoin research and implementation organization. Professor Catalini co-created Facebook's cryptocurrency Diem, formerly Libra.

MIT students received free cryptocurrencies 2014 project: Spanjers anticipated that he has no plans to sell bitcoin in the short term: he is curious to see how far the investment could go and whether the cryptocurrency will ever be used as a form of payment. "It's kind of like when you go to the casino and you get $ 20 for free, because you use it to play." However, he acknowledges that if his third of bitcoin ever grows at more than the price of MIT tuition, he would consider selling. "It would be like saying, ‘MIT paid for itself, '" he ironically said.

MIT students received free cryptocurrencies 2014 project

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"My advice would be to be ready to roll up your sleeves": the recommendation of a Spanish woman who works in the department of regulation of Revolut in the US for someone who wants to work in fintech

In the financial field, complying with regulation is key, which in the sector is known as compliance anglicism. In the fintech arena, this is even more important for the speed at which new developments and technologies are applied. Lucía Marin works at Revolut, the British financial superapp, in the Regulatory Compliance team of the United States.

Revolut began operating in March 2020 in the United States when it launched its app in this market to be able to have accounts, share expenses among friends or withdraw money from ATMs.

"I started working at Revolut in May 2019. Before being employed, she was already a customer since 2015 and a real fan of the product. I recommended it to friends, colleagues and family because I was excited," explains Lucía Marín in an interview.

"When I discovered Revolut, I lived in Madrid and the company was very centralized in London. It wasn't my time to make the leap. My life took a 180 degree turn in 2018 when I moved to New York and read in the press that Revolut was opening an office in the big apple, " adds Marín, who points out that the company attracted him to work on a product he believed in.

In 2015, Revolut launched in the UK offering money transfers and exchanges. Today, this fintech has more than 15 million customers worldwide.

Marín, graduated in law and business administration and management, has an MBA in her training. Before joining Revolut he had worked in traditional banking, specifically in Banco Santander. "They are two different work cultures," says Marín, who does not want to enter into comparisons between one and the other.

Instead of making a difference, he prefers to talk about Revolut's way of working. Marín points out that there are no large teams or committees where responsibility is diluted.

"We all know what is expected of us and every three months we review with our supervisors at what level we have fulfilled our responsibilities. We are hired to solve problems, " he says.

Working in the fintech world is an exciting but hard task.

"My advice would be to be ready to roll up your sleeves. Working in a fintech like Revolut teaches you many things and opens many doors, but you have to be willing to give your best," he says.

"My job is to make Revolut comply with American banking regulations. In other words, that regulators trust us so that the business team can focus on growing and continue to launch products with that wow effect, " he explains when asked about his work.

So, he says he starts the day by checking if he has any messages in Slack (a messaging and task management app) from my manager or his team.

"Then I review the economic press and the fintech sector. If there is something that directly impacts Revolut or a competitor, we share it in a US team chat and discuss whether we want to do something about it or not," he adds.

Marin notes that she also likes to check my KPIs (goals) and my JIRA Board (her agile work tool) every morning to make sure she's up to date."This way, my manager has visibility into the tasks I'm working on," he says. "Next, I get into projects that I'm working on. I prefer to leave the meetings for the afternoon, except if I need the collaboration of the London team, " he says.

"It seems that I have it very organized, but the truth is that every day is different," he summarizes.