Cryptocurrency
Online short course
Study cryptocurrencies to demystify their functionality, and understand their impact on the economy and society.
6 weeks, excluding 1 week orientation.
7–10 hours of self-paced learning per week, entirely online.
Email: mitsap@getsmarter.com
Call: +1 617 997 4979
About this course
Once considered a ‘fad’ reserved for digital investors, coders, and early tech millionaires, the world of crypto today offers people the opportunity to trade in an alternative system where they can have more control over their wealth. Over the past decade, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have emerged as a new asset class offering astonishing returns. Due to its volatile nature, however, investing in cryptocurrencies requires a level of intel not dissimilar to that of more traditional asset classes.
The Cryptocurrency online short course from the MIT Media Lab offers you a rigorous perspective of crypto assets, as you explore its economics, underlying blockchain technology, functionality, and future potential. Guided by MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative — as well as crypto industry experts, economists, financial regulators, and internet entrepreneurs — you’ll gain the skills to critically assess the viability of crypto projects, and understand the opportunities and challenges associated with these technologies. With an overview of blockchain technology, the history of money, and insight into how entrepreneurs, incumbents, and governments are responding to these innovations, you’ll explore cryptocurrency in its broader context, and its impact on the economy and society at large.
What this program covers
The overview of cryptocurrency offered in this program will equip you with the ability to separate reality from hype, and an understanding of both the limitations and capabilities of this peer-to-peer electronic cash system. By comparing cryptocurrency to traditional money, modern finance, and competing technologies, you’ll learn to understand its possibilities and potential applications. With expert guidance from your Course Conveners and a host of esteemed guest speakers, you’ll gain valuable insight into the markets for cryptocurrencies and how they function within the economic environment. You’ll also analyze how financial institutions, big tech, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists are responding to the emergence of this field.
A powerful collaboration
The MIT Media Lab is collaborating with online education provider GetSmarter to create a new class of learning experience — one that is higher-touch, intimate, and personalized for the working professional.
About the Digital Currency Initiative
The Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) is a research community at the MIT Media Lab focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, that supports open source core developers, research scientists, and students committed to harnessing these technologies for the public good.
About the MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is an antidisciplinary research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT’s Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture and Planning. Its research isn’t restricted to fixed academic disciplines, but actively promotes a unique culture that emboldens unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas — including but not limited to technology, media, science, art, and design.
About GetSmarter
GetSmarter, a 2U, Inc. brand, partners with the world's leading universities and institutions to select, design, and deliver premium online short courses with a data-driven focus on learning gain.
Technology meets academic rigor in GetSmarter’s people-mediated model, which enables lifelong learners across the globe to obtain industry-relevant skills that are certified by the world’s most reputable academic institutions.
As a participant, you will also gain unlimited access to 2U’s Career Engagement Network at no extra cost. This platform will provide you with valuable career resources and events to support your professional journey. You can look forward to benefits including rich content, career templates, webinars, workshops, career fairs, networking events, panel discussions, and exclusive recruitment opportunities to connect you with potential employers.*
*Some of these events may be virtual due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
What you’ll learn
You’ll be welcomed to the program and begin connecting with fellow participants, while exploring the navigation and tools of your Online Campus. Be alerted to key milestones in the learning path, and review how your results will be calculated and distributed.
You’ll be required to complete your participant profile and submit a digital copy of your passport/identity document.
Please note that module titles and their contents are subject to change during course development.
Explore the origins and evolution of money, and how Bitcoin and blockchain technology solve the riddle of moving value on the internet.
- Define money as an economic and social construct
- Discuss the importance and implications of securely moving value digitally without the need for a central intermediary, while preventing double-spending
- Explain the potential of moving value digitally post-Bitcoin
- Identify the basic key components of blockchain technology: distributed consensus, append-only logs, and two cryptographic primitives, hash functions, and digital signatures
- Demonstrate how the key components of blockchain technology form a tamper-resistant, decentralized, public ledger
Understand what smart contracts and decentralized applications are, and explore a new form of crowdfunding, initial coin offerings (ICOs), as well as the regulatory environment it operates within.
- Define what a smart contract is and how it provides the ability to automatically execute programs which can transfer digital assets with property rights
- Describe decentralized applications (DApps) and their characteristics
- Investigate the efficacy of ICOs as a form of crowdfunding for cryptocurrency projects
- Assess the regulation of ICOs within securities laws
Learn about the volatile cryptocurrency markets, exchanges, types of cryptocurrency trading, custody solutions, and the regulations surrounding the cryptocurrency industry.
- Identify the key differences between crypto markets and traditional trading markets
- Articulate the various ways a user can obtain and sell cryptocurrencies, and the various types of exchanges and services available to them
- Identify the unique challenges with custody of private keys
- Apply existing public policy frameworks to a particular cryptocurrency project
- Analyze the positioning of cryptocurrency markets within existing public policy and regulatory frameworks
Learn how to holistically assess a crypto project by exploring the payment and platform sector and various use cases for cryptocurrencies.
- Discuss how the economics of money applies to cryptocurrencies
- Research the specifics of how blockchain technology can lower verification and networking costs
- Explain the distinction and economics of centralization versus decentralization
- Identify what characteristics of a crypto use case might lead to viability and value creation from using multiparty consensus and append-only logs
- Differentiate between hype and reality in the field of crypto projects
- Determine how Bitcoin and other payment tokens are changing the landscape for value transfer both domestically and internationally
- Assess the competitive landscape of Ethereum and other smart contract platform tokens, and how they provide a mechanism for decentralized applications
- Develop critical reasoning skills to determine when a payment, platform, or DApp token is needed and useful
Discover how financial institutions, big tech, and banks are responding to the emergence of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
- Recognize cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology’s role as a catalyst for change for some of the world’s largest institutions in finance, technology, and central banking
- Identify the differences between permissioned and permissionless blockchains, and why large institutions are tending toward permissioned or private blockchains
- Investigate how Big Finance and Big Tech are adapting in response to the emergence of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology
- Analyze the goals and functions of central banks and their roles with regard to fiat currency and commercial banks
- Analyze how CBDCs, inspired by cryptocurrencies, might fit into the evolution of money, and how central banks are considering their strategies around the opportunities and challenges
Explore the technical challenges facing cryptocurrencies, the Internet of Value as a new layer built on top of the internet, and what the future holds for cryptocurrencies.
- Recognize the scalability and performance issues regarding cryptocurrencies and possible Layer 2 solutions
- Discuss privacy, security, and other challenges in permissioned and permissionless systems and the various potential solutions
- Investigate the idea of an Internet of Value developing on top of the internet as a new protocol layer
- Debate the importance of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in commerce, sifting through the hype and ascertaining ground truths
- Predict the implications and future trajectory of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies
Who should take this program
This course is designed for anyone seeking a working knowledge of the latest cryptocurrency developments and the skills to assess the viability of crypto projects. It is especially applicable to executives exploring new organizational needs, and is also relevant to both financial services and IT professionals aiming to gain a competitive advantage within their sector by understanding how crypto is actually being applied. Professionals and entrepreneurs from wide-ranging industries who are seeking future growth or new opportunities will also benefit from a comprehensive understanding of cryptocurrency and the environment within which it operates.
This course is for you if you want to:
Develop critical perspectives
Explore cryptocurrency, its functionality and latest developments, while gaining the knowledge and skills to assess the viability of crypto projects.
Explore current opportunities
Understand the environment in which cryptocurrency exists, including response strategies from Big Tech, Big Finance, and regulators, as well as possible future trajectories.
Expand your network
Gain access to the renowned thought leadership and bold, progressive culture of the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative.
About the certificate
This program offers you the opportunity to earn an MIT Media Lab digital certificate as validation of your skills.
Assessment is continuous and based on a series of practical assignments completed online. In order to be issued with a digital certificate, you’ll need to meet the requirements outlined in the course handbook. The handbook will be made available to you as soon as you begin the program.
Your certificate will be issued in your legal name and sent to you digitally upon successful completion of the course, as per the stipulated requirements.
Who you’ll learn from
These subject matter experts from the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative guide the program design and appear in a number of program videos, along with a variety of industry professionals.
Your Course Conveners
Gary Gensler
Former Professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management, MIT Sloan School of Management
Neha Narula
Director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab
Industry Experts
Jeremy Allaire
Co-Founder and CEO, Circle
Sandeep Arora
Chief Operating Officer, Citi Markets and Securities
Sheila Bair
Former Chair, US FDIC
Tadge Dryja
Co-Founder and Developer, Lightning Network
Rod Garratt
Maxwell C. and Mary Pellish Chair in Economics, UC Santa Barbara
Reid Hoffman
Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, LinkedIn
Tom Jessop
Head of Corporate Business Development, Fidelity Investments; President, Fidelity Digital Assets
Mike Novogratz
Founder and CEO, Galaxy Digital
Nouriel Roubini
Professor of Economics, NYU’s Stern School of Business; CEO, Roubini Macro Associates
Hyun Song Shin
Economic Adviser and Head of Research, Bank for International Settlements
Jimmy Song
Crypto Developer, Educator and Entrepreneur
Changpeng Zhao
Founder and CEO, Binance
How you’ll learn
Every program is broken down into manageable, weekly modules, designed to accelerate your learning process through diverse learning activities:
- Work through your downloadable and online instructional material
- Interact with your peers and learning facilitators through weekly class-wide forums and reviewed small group discussions
- Enjoy a wide range of interactive content, including video lectures, infographics, live polls, and more
- Investigate rich, real-world case studies
- Apply what you learn each week to quizzes and ongoing project submissions, culminating in comprehensive cryptocurrency knowledge that enables you to assess the viability of any crypto project
Your success team
GetSmarter, with whom the MIT Media Lab is collaborating to deliver this online program, provides a personalized approach to online education that ensures you’re supported throughout your learning journey.
Head Learning Facilitator
A subject expert who’ll guide you through content-related challenges.
Success Adviser
Your one-on-one support, available during university hours (9a.m.–5p.m. EST) to resolve technical and administrative challenges.
Global success team
Available 24/7 to solve your tech-related and administrative queries and concerns.
Technical requirements
Basic requirements
In order to complete this program, you’ll need a current email account and access to a computer and the internet, as well as a PDF Reader. You may need to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, and read and create documents in Microsoft Word or Excel.
Browser requirements
We recommend that you use Google Chrome as your internet browser when accessing the Online Campus. Although this is not a requirement, we have found that this browser performs best for ease of access to course material. This browser can be downloaded here.
Additional requirements
Certain programs may require additional software and resources. These additional software and resource requirements will be communicated to you upon registration and/or at the beginning of the program. Please note that Google, Vimeo, and YouTube may be used in our course delivery, and if these services are blocked in your jurisdiction, you may have difficulty in accessing program content. Please check with an Enrollment Adviser before registering for this program if you have any concerns about this affecting your experience with the Online Campus.
