10 Days of Cryptocurrency Donations – #7: Ripple Commits $50 Million to Universities

Cryptocurrency firm Ripple, known for it’s XRP cryptocurrency, pledged to donate $50 million to universities around the world as part of it’s University Blockchain Research Initiative. Originally selecting a group of 17 universities, they’ve expanded their list to a total of 29.

“We launched UBRI back in June of 2018 to provide support for 17 different universities around the world to help progress their study of blockchain technology, cryptography, digital assets and fintech. Blockchain is an incredibly transformational technology and helping advance the best minds in the world, who are already showing interest in this field, is sure to benefit the entire ecosystem. We’ve added 11 new universities this time around and now have 29 schools involved with the program. Expanding the ecosystem to a more global, diversified network of UBRI partners will only continue to enrich these projects,” said Eric van Miltenburg, SVP of Global Operations at Ripple.

The full list of universities that are part of the University Blockchain Research Initiative:

• Australian National University College of the Law
• CITP at Princeton
• CSAIL at MIT
• Delft University of Technology (Netherlands)
• Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil)
• Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
• IIT Bombay
• International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H)
• Korea University
• McCombs School of Business, UT-Austin
• Stanford University
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• The University of Pennsylvania
• UCL (University College London)
• University of Luxembourg
• University of Nicosia (Cyprus)
• University of Oregon
• University of Waterloo
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Cornell University
• Duke University
• Georgetown University
• University of Kansas
• University of Michigan
• Morgan State University
• National University of Singapore
• Northeastern University
• University of Sao Paulo
• Institute for Fintech Research, Tsinghua University

The programs are meant to position the next generation of college students to meet the increasing demand for jobs in the blockchain industry.