Cryptocurrency and blockchain is slowly becoming part of everybody’s life. This is because they have the potential to change the way we do business, as well as other aspects of our lives. For example, cryptocurrency has already been used to purchase items such as houses and cars. And while there are some people who are still unsure about what these things are, there are many others who are excited about their potential. In fact, many experts believe that cryptocurrency and blockchain will soon become a staple in our society.

Blockchain technology has been around since the early days of the internet. In 1991, an article was published in a cryptography magazine that described the concept of a blockchain. In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper which outlined the use of blockchain technology for digital currency. And in 2009, Bitcoin was launched as the first-ever cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrencies have been on a wild ride over the past year or so. After reaching an all-time high of $3 trillion in market capitalization, the total market cap of cryptocurrencies has since dropped to $1.1 trillion. This accounts for about 2.5% of U.S. equity market capitalization.

With such an invasion of cryptocurrencies in our life that students have started to look for courses and degrees in blockchain to create a stable career in it. Therefore, there are a lot of universities to study blockchain technology. So, here Coindesk has come up with a long list of 50 universities with the researchers of MIT and Stanford.

Below is the list of the top 20 universities to study blockchain.

It is not surprising to see that all the universities of financial hubs like Singapore, Hongkong, London, and California’s Silicon Valley tech hub are dominating the chart. And, National University of Singapore has first place because of its multiple blockchain research centers, master’s program on digital financial technology, and hosting a lot of blockchain conferences and clubs.

Canadian and American blockchain schools had the highest tuition fees, with an average of $52,000 per annum. In comparison to this very steep price tag, European institutions followed suit at a more reasonable cost of around $16,700 yearly. Finally, Asian and Australian universities offered students affordable alternatives for studying blockchain technology by charging approximately $12,000 every year on average.

One more point to ponder is that these courses in these colleges are either certificate programs or online courses. But due to the increasing demand, they are making their way into the curriculums of Ivy League schools like Harvard, MIT, etc. They are even part of some of the master's programs in finance. MIT has been the university where the maximum number of research papers are written on this.

Security Threats by increasing usage of bitcoins in College Campuses

In 2014, several educational institutions began to accept the use of digital currency. At Georgia Institute of Technology, students were granted access to loading bitcoin funds onto their campus debit cards for daily purchases in addition to MIT’s acceptance and distribution of cryptocurrency spending projects with incoming freshmen. Furthermore, King's College university located in New York City allowed its' student body payment via Bitcoin since then as well - giving rise international adoption of widely known cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency presents both financial opportunity and security risks as its usage increases. As ransomware was the threat of 2017, higher education institutions now stand to face even greater challenges due to growing cryptocurrency mining activity in 2018 (at an incredible 85 percent). Many students are taking advantage by investing or trying their hand at mining instead.

So much usage of digital money creates problems for universities, which open door to many cybercriminal activities. This also leads to network noise that can hide security issues and have a big negative impact on IP address reputation. It drains electricity and computing power. 

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