Starting this fall, every MIT undergrad will have at least $100 worth of Bitcoins to their name, thanks to a couple of students who’ve raised half a million to do so. But, they’re not just doing it so their schoolmates can eat something other than ramen — this is actually an official project by the school’s Bitcoin Club, so professors and researchers from the institute can study how students spend their virtual money. 

Two MIT students have successfully raised more than half a million dollars in order to give all 4,528 undergraduate students on campus $100 worth of the cryptocurrency to use as they see fit. Rather than being another Bitcoin publicity stunt, the pair say that the intention is to establish a genuine ecosystem for digital currencies at the university and to help MIT maintain its long heritage at the cutting edge of technology. “Giving students access to cryptocurrencies is analogous to providing them with Internet access at the dawn of the internet era,” Jeremy Rubin, one half of the duo behind the project, said. “When the distribution happens this fall, it will make the MIT campus the first place in the world where it will be possible to assume widespread access to Bitcoin.”