Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey Launch 'Bitcoin Academy' In Brooklyn

Bitcoin is not only about trading and investing. It can also be an opportunity for those living in difficult circumstances to explore this new space and attend a school where to learn about the fundamentals of this extraordinary ecosystem.

That’s what Jack Dorsey and Jay-z will fund, for an initiative to support residents of Marcy Houses, a public housing area in Brooklyn where people don’t have a lot of access to opportunities.

The Bitcoin Academy is the name of the project that is the result of Jack Dorsey and Jay-z’s commitment. As we just mentioned it will start in Brooklyn, keeping kids busy for the entire summer—that is, from June 22 to September 7—and aims at teaching the basics of Bitcoin and how it works.

Instruction will be provided two evenings per week until early September, and students will also receive a free dinner. Block and Jay-Z’s charity staff, the Shawn Carter Foundation, will help with on-the-ground education.

Jay-Z and Dorsey announced the program on Thursday morning. It will begin at Marcy Houses but may be expanded to other neighborhoods. The classes will be taught through an educational group, Crypto Blockchain Plug, and Black Bitcoin Billionaire, a group that seeks to introduce African-Americans to Bitcoin and has received a grant from Block in the past.

This is a pilot project, and it has all the intentions of being exported to other communities, focusing on the issue that Bitcoin can be used by the disadvantaged groups and those most likely to be outside of a classical financial and banking system. These groups include poorest parts of the population, even within one of the richest countries in the world.

“Me and @sc will financially support The Bitcoin Academy, a program for residents of Marcy Houses in Brooklin, New York, where Jay grew up. In partnership with @CryptPlug3 and @BlkBTCillions. Bitcoin is becoming a hugely important tool for many in Africa and Central and South America. We believe the same potential exists in communities in the US. Our goal is to show that making such powerful tools available to people enables them to create more independence for themselves”.

That was the Twitter message from Jack Dorsey, one of Bitcoin’s biggest supporters on a global scale, a devotion that led him to leave Twitter and devote himself 24/7  to his new kind of ventures.

This is not the first collaboration between Jay-Z and Dorsey where they promoted a Bitcoin and crypto-based future. Last year, Dorsey’s Block (then known as Square) acquired the rapper’s streaming music service called Tidal, which the two have proposed to be used as a vehicle for NFT distribution.

Shout out to @Jack. #Bitcoin Academy, starting in Marcy, a place that taught me so much, is hopefully the first of many. The simple goal is to provide people tools to build independence for themselves and then the community around them. https://t.co/4uHkCfdFZv

— Mr. Carter (@sc) June 9, 2022

Dorsey and Jay-Z, who is also an investor in blockchain startups like Alchemy, launched an endowment in 2021 to fund Bitcoin development in Africa and India too. Dorsey is funding the new Bitcoin Academy out of his own pocket (and so is Jay-Z) but has also pushed crypto-related charitable endeavors at Block, including a $5 million fund backed by revenue from interest earned on the company’s corporate Bitcoin holdings.

Even in moments like this, when the bear market is getting painful for many people in the industry, this kind of news is very important and represents a clear signal that this sector is here to stay.