MIT's Second Bitcoin Expo Says No to "Parallel Speech"

From March 5th to March 6th, US time, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Bitcoin Club will hold its annual Bitcoin Expo at the MIT Samberg Conference Center. It is the only Bitcoin academic conference organized by students of the school.

Notable speakers at the conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, included Shual Kfir, CTO of Digital Asset Holdings (DAH), Joseph Poon, one of the authors of the Lightning Network, and Jonas Schnelli, a Bitcoin Core developer.

It is reported that the purpose of the MIT Bitcoin Club is to "provide ideas, plans and projects related to Bitcoin", and the Expo is an extension of this goal. It creates a forum that brings together an international community to study Bitcoin technology and explore future impacts.

Nchinda, a junior computer science student at MIT, is the president of the Bitcoin Club and the executive director of the expo.

When asked about the objectives of the conference, Nchinda explained what makes such an annual expo unique.

"The Expo is not a hodgepodge of related concepts, but has its own clear definition. There are three differences between the MIT Bitcoin Expo and other Bitcoin conferences: 1) This is a conference 100% organized by students. It is an academic conference, we do not seek to make a profit from it, we just put forward what we need. 2) Compared with most other conferences, the tickets for this conference are cheap, and we don’t want money to be a barrier to entry. Last year’s student tickets were free, and this year I will try to use Bitcoin. 3) There is no fee to become a speaker. This is something I insist on again and again. Money can’t help you get a speaker position. We require speakers to give public welfare speeches."

Nchinda explained that the theme of the first day of the expo was mainly technical.

“We want to use the expo to explore the challenges that Bitcoin addresses. Then we’ll move on to related work inspired by Bitcoin. The development of Bitcoin has a lot of similarities to the development of the Internet.”

Nchinda went on to say that the second day of the expo will move into discussions on the financial and commercial applications of blockchain technology.

The MIT Bitcoin Club has been active in promoting Bitcoin. As early as 2014, the club held its first Bitcoin airdrop event, which they called the MIT Bitcoin Project. After obtaining $500,000 in financing, the club promised to give $100 in Bitcoin to every freshman at MIT. In addition, the club also launched MIT BitComp to encourage MIT students and alumni to develop Bitcoin-related applications, and the most impressive project was awarded a $15,000 bonus.

Additionally, Nchinda encouraged club members to promote Bitcoin and related technologies from any angle that interests them, be it finance, mining, cryptography or marketing.

Original article: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/mit-hosts-annual-bitcoin-expo-march-and-to-explore-challenges-facing-bitcoin-1456421669
By Michael Gord
Compilation: Overnight porridge
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/mit-bitcoin-2)