Fri, Nov 22, 2013

http://www.slashgear.com/bitcoin-becomes-an-official-payment-option-at-its-first-university-21306504/

Bitcoin has been around for a handful of years, but has only recently seen widespread attention and a skyrocketing value all the while.ATMs that work with the currency cropped up earlier this year, and soon retailers and different services started announcing acceptance of the digital monies. That red carpet has expanded, with the first-ever university revealing that students can now pay tuition in bitcoins.

The University of Nicosia in Cyprus has announced that students can now pay for tuition and other related fees in bitcoin, making it the first college or university to acceot the digital currency. The reason given was that digital currencies are an inevitable reality that will continue to grow in the future, and so there is no good reason to avoid accepting it.

This is followed with the announcement that a new area of study has been slated to arrive at the university next year — a Master of Science Degree in digital currencies. Such a move is intriguing, and will be an interesting element of economic study given the relatively new nature of digital currencies and the rate at which bitcoin has proliferated around the world.

The question is how well accepting bitcoins as payment will work out presently for all parties involved, the reason being the variable nature of the currency at the moment. Bitcoin value has skyrocketed recently, and students may be reluctant to part with a form of payment that could be worth double its present value before the next semester ends.