The Blockchain University was officially launched on December 17th, 2014 at Consensus HQ in Mountain View, California. The staff released the following statement regarding the education it will offer:
“The course is planned to be held almost every Saturday over 8 weeks commencing the first week of January 2015 and ending in March 2015. The first course will be offered for FREE! Free, with a $100 deposit refunded on course completion. Each Saturday from 8AM – 12AM will be the formal classroom study, followed by an optional afternoon assisted study and for building student projects. The course will culminate with a projects demo day, open to the public.”
The primary developer is Adam Ludwin, CEO of blockchain API provider Chain, and instructors include Koinify CEO Tom Ding; Reddit cryptocurrency engineer Ryan X. Charles; and CTO of Chain Ryan Smith.
Ludwin began the launch by delivering a speech to the nearly 75 people in attendance, casually asking them:
“Bitcoin is the worst investment of 2014. It’s worse than the [Russian] ruble. So why are we here?”
Ludwin later answered the question by explaining that major corporations are now looking at bitcoin as something promising, not just a passing phase, and that many are looking to build new features and apps through the blockchain’s technology.
Applications for the course are due at the end of December. The course is set to begin the following month.