Bitcoin Academy three months on: Has Jay-Z succeeded

Three months after Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey launched “The Bitcoin Academy,” the first graduates of the pilot are sharing their thoughts on the scheme, and it appears the program is already winning conversions to Bitcoin.

The academy was first announced in June with a goal of “strengthening the community” in Brooklyn, New York, where Jay-Z is originally from.

Announcing the show, Jay-Z tweeted“The simple goal is to give people the tools to build independence for themselves and then the community around them.”

A Bitcoin success story

The 12-week crash course in crypto was keen to get their butts on their seats and give people a reason to care, even if they didn’t know much about Bitcoin before the course started.

Participants received a free meal each night they attended and a smartphone with a one-year data plan to help them incorporate the lessons into their real lives.

Modules in the academy included “Careers in Crypto” and “Why Decentralization Matters.” For some, the lessons seem to have resonated.

“I thought Bitcoin was a scam,” Danny Craft told med The Daily Beast. After the course, the 56-year-old Brooklyn resident became a Bitcoin believer. “I’m coming to find out, you just have to know how to do it. When you put money into it, you just let it sit there and you let it grow.”

Upon completion of the course, each participant was given $1,000 in Bitcoin to help them begin their journey to financial freedom.

Participants were asked what they intended to do with the money. An unnamed graduate expressed his intention to hodl.

“If you take it out, you lose the benefit of having something in the long run,” they said.

Not everyone gets it yet

While a number of respondents received the course well and came back with a newfound admiration for Bitcoin and all things decentralized, not everyone in the community was so impressed.

A local resident said the money would be better in a “real stock” rather than crypto. However, it is unclear whether this resident actually attended the course.

One person who attended said, “I took the class, but I didn’t really understand much.”

Following feedback, The Bitcoin Academy aims to learn lessons from the first run and is already thinking about how to improve the “next phase” of the program.

Adopt Satoshi

According to data compiled by Ariel Investments and Charles Schwab, later reported by The economist25% of black Americans own some form of cryptocurrency compared to 15% of white Americans.

The disparity leaves room for speculation about the cause. For some, the promise of stateless, censorship-resistant money resonates.

At Black Blockchain Summit 2021, Bitcoin evangelists, both speakers and attendees, were collectively singing from the same hymn sheet. The song was one of liberation and financial freedom.

As evidenced by emerging markets, the Bitcoin narrative is purpose-built to appeal to people and communities who feel somehow disenfranchised by the old system. This applies in countries with sky-high inflation, or in states governed by overbearing regimes, and in societies that in one way or another feel marginalized or left behind.

As reported by TIMEattendees at the Black Blockchain Summit conference even wore T-shirts proclaiming, “SATOSHI IS BLACK.”

As the crypto maxim goes “We are all Satoshi,” and so, as adoption grows, Satoshi is all of us.

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