Bitcoin and the Academy

Abstract

Bitcoin emerged from an anonymous creator who brought together several different academic disciplines with history in academic research, such as economics, computer science, and mathematics. The genius of Bitcoin was combining these disciplines into a single economic system. Part of the reason the academy has resisted Bitcoin adoption is that it is unsuited to this kind of interdisciplinary innovation. Economists and computer scientists do not understand one another’s disciplines deeply enough to create something like Bitcoin. For future radical innovations, the academy must reorganize around interdisciplinary innovation by breaking down disciplinary barriers to allow mixing in novel ways.