The prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology has formally announced their plan to launch a Digital Currency Initiative within their media lab facilities.
The general goal of this initiative is to bring together a community of global experts from across a wide variety of fields, ranging from cryptography to economics, in order to tackle digital currency research and innovation, to educate governments, non-profits and private sector actors about the technology and finally, to provide evidence-backed research that will serve as reference for future policies, Coinbuzz reported.
Media lab director Joi Ito had been hinting at the possibility for weeks and finally announced the initiative would be helmed by former White House Senior Advisor Brian Forde. Forde is a leading expert in mobile and data innovation and under his tutelage, Ito expects MIT to become “a neutral academic home for some of the conversations and the technical coordination” for Bitcoin standards development.
Bitcoin’s past
“It’s no secret that Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are off to a rocky start. You don’t have to look far to find headline-grabbing stories about the insecurity of wallets, volatility of price, and illicit use cases. But today, building off of the work of the MIT Bitcoin Club and Bitcoin Project, the Media Lab is making a commitment to work with developers, academics, the private sector, governments, and nonprofits to conduct the research necessary to support the commercial and social viability of this technology.”
Given the recent Bitcoin Foundation debacle, the Digital Currency Initiative stands poised to become a major force in Bitcoin ecosystem coordination.
