MIT Bitcoin Giveaway Program's Sent BTC Now Valued at $110 Million

In 2014, two MIT students, Jeremy Rubin and Dan Elitzer, launched an experimental program distributing $100 worth of Bitcoin to each of the 4,494 undergraduates, totaling about $500,000 (with half of the funding supported by Hudson River Trading co-founder Alexander Morcos). The project aimed to study the impact of early adopters on the spread of new technology and received support from MIT professors and the administration. Although actual use of Bitcoin on campus was limited at the time, with Bitcoin prices rising over 220 times, the total value of the gifted Bitcoin now exceeds $110 million. Jeremy Rubin later contributed to the development of Bitcoin Core, while Dan Elitzer co-founded venture firms such as IDEO CoLab Ventures and Nascent.