Cryptocurrency: Beyond Bitcoin Teach-Out

In March 2021, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill that calls for the development of a high school program focused on financial literacy. The sixteen subtopics include managing debt, computing federal income taxes, and novelly, cryptocurrency. In 2019, the French Ministry of National Education made a similar amendment to their education plan. This signals something significant: policymakers formally recognize that cryptocurrencies should be part of a standard financial education. Conversely, anyone who is interested in cryptocurrency should ensure they’re developing thorough financial literacy. In the previous activities, you’ve learned about the mechanisms of cryptocurrency and blockchain and the different ways that they impact societies. In this activity, you will consider how changes in financial technology and the finance system may impact you in the future.

In this next video, Robert Dittmar, Professor Finance at the University of Michigan delineates between cryptocurrency and FinTech.  

The term FinTech refers to all technology and innovation related to financial services and does not necessarily imply newness; checks and paper money are two examples of FinTech that we are very familiar with. Robert lays out four categories: credit tech, invest tech, insurtech, and pay tech - the last of which includes many blockchain technologies.

Optional: An innovation of some types of FinTech is less reliance on banking institutions and credit systems, which could empower unbanked and underbanked populations across the globe. Read more about it here