10 years as a university crypto teacher

Transcript

H yob how do I pronounce your last name y linski y linski 10 years as a university crypto research that's really hard and you still look good oh thank you I don't think so give a round of applause to yakob thank you hello good morning duano thank you very much for coming and being here um I'm a crypto teacher I represent PR University of economics and business and we are partners of this lovely conference we are really honored and happy to be the partner so that's that's me teaching apparently and um I like

seals and the seal asks how did I get to do that um I'd say that my story started in 2008 and uh my thinking should I just use this and this I don't need okay that's great okay so uh I was an economist back in 2008 and it was the formatting event for me the uh the crisis and uh we were questioning Banks and the financial system and trying to seek for Alternatives and uh what I did was going to Bulgaria and started selling women lingerie

um because I didn't like the school and what we've been taught so uh I was when I was not a student I started thinking on my own and trying to research some alternative approaches to money and we also had some bonus points like loyalty loyalty points here tokenization let's say and then I returned back to uh the university because selling lury is not really profitable and I wrote the diploma thesis on alternative currencies and proposals how to how to improve the money and there was one chapter about Bitcoin that I didn't really like back

then in 2012 13 I didn't find it fit to be the Global Currency but that's exactly what people liked about my thesis they were really interested in in Bitcoin and then uh there was the European financial crisis and Banks were shut down in in Cypress and stole some of their clients money and uh I thought hey there there's something about it maybe we should do that maybe it makes sense so that's when I bought my first bit coins and there came the idea to make uh the first University uh course on crypto there already had been two other courses

at un University of nikosia Cyprus and at Princeton but they were really Technical and Bitcoin focused and I and my friend petrick Inman wanted to focus on altcoins and the economic uh perspectives of of of crypto and Petra was my classmate uh from the secondary school and uh he had a degree from history and uh once we were sitting in the tea house and he said hey uh I have this degree from history and I don't really make much money so I told him about Bitcoin you should try that and he was more clever not only did he bought buy some Bitcoins but uh he focused on alt coins

and he discovered NXT which was something like ethereum is today that was the second biggest cryptocurrency and it came with smart contracts they were not to in complete but uh yes and he said hey there will be a university course uh economic course on crypto at MIT but if we start early we should we should be a had we we can have the first course so we tried that and then we prayed and we were really blessed and lucky because my colleagues and bosses at the University were really open-minded and Novelty seeking and they supported us so we started 14 days ahead before uh MIT and

opened this course which was not about Bitcoin it was about NXT and uh sorry for the check I I don't have that in English but imagine how Stone Age it was so there was like 400 views uh on YouTube and it was the fourth fourth rank uh at YouTube at cryptocurrency lecture so for that time it was rather major and uh we we gave NXT crypto to the students and we wanted them to do something with it and they did and we could observe that because it was in the blockchain

and uh at the end there were uh there was an online meeting let's say with the developers of NXT and the students shared their experience and ideas and it was really nice and because uh this course was successful the university granted us a regular course that we have been teaching uh ever since on cryptocurrencies and there are some interesting things like the students get their marks as a c crypto token at sepolia uh so that they need to learn how to use mam mask and how to keep their seat safe because every now and then like every semester actually it

happens that some of the students come to me and say hey I I I lost my computer or i on my cell phone and I can't access my wallet but you remember that I've been active right so you you let me pass and I say no well you need to send the tokens back to my address so that I can give you uh the the the mark so I'm I'm sorry but this is this uh lesson that if it was real crypto you would lose it the problem here is that the test Nets at ethereum change uh uh to time so that's some uh bugger with that but it's quite okay and in this course the students uh need to learn how to make a fundamental

or systemic analysis of a currency of their choice uh how how to think about it about the utility of the token and interdependencies and stuff like that and I think that it's important if if you teach something like crypto which is really fast changing and dynamic to keep learning and trying not just to to teach the basics but learn something unique and then pass it to the students so I went to London uh and I did uh PhD research at Kingston University uh with Steve Keane uh Professor Steve Kean

predicted the credit crunch in 2008 he won a rever for the best prediction of the crisis that that nobody saw coming and uh I learned a lot from him about System Dynamics stock flow consistent modeling using Minsky software which we used later to predict the problems in projects like uh Luna Celsius or X Infinity uh because the credit crunch also was a problem in the system Dynamic so you need to focus on uh on the issues rather than expect that everything will be fine and in equilibrium

forever uh this is my colleague Martin Bach who now teaches these things at our University uh as well modern monetary Theory and stocks on consistent modeling and also my my uh colleague uh in outlift which is which is the company where I work uh keep it practical that's like the imperative so yeah uh if you want to teach something you need to do that that that's what I believe I I have this colleague uh who has been teaching about Business and Entrepreneurship for 20 years but he's never had his own company he's never been an entrepreneur so I try

to teach what I actually do to connect the Practical knowledge uh with the university and in 2016 we opened this new course or new it was new back then Bitcoin and blackchain Pla practical seminar and in this course the students learn to uh build their career or to be employable in crypto so we do things like uh Wallet transaction safety of course uh but they also create their own tokens their own Dows and the good thing about this is that that I don't teach them how to do that I give them the task then they have the week to figure out

how to do that and in the next uh class we discuss that what were the problems the issues uh the barriers so that's that's the teaching method uh that that I learned in London that I tried to replicate and I think that that's crucial for crypto because if I taught them how to do that in 2 years it would be outdated because the the crypto industry changes so quickly so I I try to teach the students to to learn uh rather than just to listen and repeat uh identifying utility in crypto I think that uh we're um beyond the stage of over let's say

speculation and false hopes and people are more and more asking about the utility and hey I'm buying the token what does it do so uh the students learn how to identify the true utility if there is any usually there is none we make a flea market so there's a class where the students just bring things from their home we've got International students mostly like 70% are international and they bring their stuff and then exchange it uh paying in Bitcoin uh lightning we have a trading competition which runs for six or seven weeks at the demo account at exchanges so the students try to put their money where their faith is and uh

most importantly we have collaboration with the practice so like half of the semester we invite guests from successful crypto companies and uh it's up to them how how they make their lecture uh or seminar and uh they also offer the students some micro internships the students can cherry pick which tasks they do the the tasks are rather demanding but they can cherry pick uh because they can get like 160% of the final grade so uh if they skip something they still can get 100% so it's a good chance for the people from the industry to try the

students who are really enthusiastic and willing to do something because it's not obligatory for them and uh to finish the course the students need to make something practical not just so that the teacher reads something and gives them the the grade or the mark but uh something you know in the real world outside of school be it profit Le or nonprofit and in the middle of the semester during soal Innovation week they pitched their ideas in front of the people from the industry who we invite to some venue outside of the school so the students also learn how to pitch their

ideas and the only thing that they are not allowed to do is writing essays because you never get employed for being able to write an essay unless you can publish it that would be fine so I always use this slide because students tend to write the essays anyway that's that's what they are educated for in nor in schools normally so how many points do I get well zero yeah and they actually get zero when they fail uh can you study this course well yes since this year yes because uh we updated it and uh next to the offside uh on-site course at the University we made

it online it's called digital assets and blockchain Industry and uh it's our first experience with making online courses but we did our best and we I hope we will keep you know uh improving it scaling it it's a great thing to be a crypto teacher it's a great thing for our careers so thanks to the university I get to the swell conference in San Francisco when we negotiating on behalf of the university and Ura bank with ripple apps there was Bill Clinton uh the former president of the United States as the keynote speaker yeah he's really into crypto uh he supported s bank P fre maybe you can uh maybe you remember it uh we also were in the

working groups uh at the European commission uh trying to prepare some legislation for University diplomas at blockchain or european IDs on the blockchain uh but most the most important thing is the connecting the students to the practice so if you are interested in the students pitches in the digital course feel free to scan this QR code and we might stay in contact and maybe you can grasp some interesting students or or their ideas or give them your valuable feedback that would be really great uh and last thing I want to talk about is our collaboration with binance

Academy that's why I have this t-shirt now uh I don't work for binance but we produced an online course uh with for binance Academy and it serves as a teaser for the digital asset and blockchain Industry course at the University which anyone not just the students anyone can have it so if you go to binance academy un there are three university courses we were the first University to negotiate with binance uh in September last year so we produced the course but then we waited for another five or six months before it started it because uh two other universities uh from Luxembourg and a European University they also

delivered their courses which which makes sense because now uh the selection is more varied and uh I I I think it's lovely uh and it was great to try that uh and it was really fun doing this course so in the in the course uh we deal with topics like uh the technology and layer TOS ethereum smart contracts daps defy uh traditional Financial system how it works endogenous money Theory and there are also documents from legac institutions like Bank of England B for

international settlements uh the police how they view crypto so you can put it in contrast and make your own opinion uh Mining and consensus mechanisms scam prevention secur safety uh tokenization of real world assets we have Mr yen uh in our course uh who happened to have a lecture here yesterday I enjoyed it uh and yeah can you try the courses well yes uh if you want you can so binance Academy course for only $4 and uh the university course uh I don't know how expensive it will be we ran the first uh round and that was for free but uh

probably it will not be for free uh any longer but if you take the binance course you will get some discount so that's it some bulletproof bullet points I think that it's important to always innovate and listen to the students feedback it's great to have students from different countries because they they might have interesting views and uh I always check with what I say make sense sometimes I realize it doesn't make sense sometimes it doesn't make sense but I don't realize it but I try uh Don't lecture lead and asset so I I want to get to give a lot of freedom to the students and then just

communicate with them and help them make make up their own mind and scale and collaborate uh I say we because uh I couldn't do that alone it's quite demanding when you have a lot of practical assignment so we have more teachers Karim Abdullah uh and uh also assistance uh from the students so some some of the students started helping us with the homework assignments and stuff so uh there are more people working on it more than 1,000 International students so far in the 10 years plus 300 more from binance Academy in the last two

weeks and what I'm really proud and happy for or about is that many of my stud started their own businesses or NGS or they found jobs in respected great companies in crypto uh so that's it thank you for your attention uh and I think that we we still have room for questions correct we have the room for one question good anyone has a question yes I think so hi thank you so much for this

interesting talk I was particularly interested because I have teaching background as well and my question may be more into them meth methodology yes because um as you said blockchain and crypto they change so fast and when you like uh with the lectures and in the course structure and for example you already you need to set for the whole semester or for the whole year but then something changes again in the crypto so how do you navigate all these challenging challenges and maybe what other biggest challenges you face as a

teacher I think it's important to be humble to be prepared that things change and that things in crypto don't work properly yet it's become way better than some years ago uh in terms of the user experience but still the students sometimes are uh or feel weird that hey it doesn't work like it should or I had to do this uh for the fifth time before something happened and that's exactly the message that I I want to give them that hey it's very polished and looks nice and the you know new technology and it will change the world but it's not the fact it's not real you know to some extent yes yes and there are some things

that already work but mostly uh no and there are a lot of obstacles to be overcome and I think that more people need to work in user experience user interface that this is a big topic and uh the fact that some something changes or breaks and it happens all the time that we use we Implement a service for the trading competition for instance and then it breaks and doesn't work and we need to bypass it some somehow so uh yes there are problems and H the biggest obstacle for me would be if I had to do it on my own because I'm not really good in organizing things that's why I'm really glad that we have a team of people that help and are more talented in you know dealing with these issues

than I am great thank you and also another one is about students so they are like from different backgrounds so does it matter if they don't have technical background or how do you navigate different levels like that great question thank you um it's not so much about uh the technical things it it is on the user um level so they need to learn how to use the technology and how to use it safely but I don't expect them to be programmers some of my students are but we are an economic Business University just one faculty is for it so a lot of

the students don't know anything about programming and it's completely fine and um yeah thank you yob thank you much did you train those seal images yourself sorry did you train those seal images yourself uh in the mattress they seal the images yourself oh the the seals they're they're beautiful right so I made some of the images in GPT oh CH GPT okay that's because the new C GPT can do images like mid Journey so yes uh probably better with mid journey I don't know uh that's what my wife said yes and she's a graphic designer so probably you're right saying all right thank you

so much let's welcome our next speaker uh is it Professor Chi Dr Chi I don't know Dr CH Dr CH I just feel like he he looks smart uh so his topic is advancing parallel evm it's going to be very technical but let's hear it away um right now I'll pleas do um