This fascinating experiment involving free BTC generated concrete results and we’re here to review them. The feel-good story arrives courtesy of CNBC, who interviewed some of the protagonists and got to the bottom of things. It all started with 19-years-old Jeremy Rubin, who developed a program called Tidbit. It allowed “users to mine for Bitcoins on a client’s computer as a replacement for traditional advertising.” The authorities weren’t so keen on his idea, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation remembers: In December 2013, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office issued a sweeping subpoena to Rubin and Tidbit, seeking Tidbit’s source code, documents and narrative responses about how Tidbit worked, which websites it was installed on and the Bitcoin accounts and wallet addresses associated with Tidbit. Related Reading | MIT BTC Project Goes Live, Offer $100 of Free BTC to Undergrads at MIT They eventually dropped the investigation, but one good thing came out of it. He realized that even though he thought “everyone was super cutting-edge” at MIT, not many were familiar with Bitcoin. So, logically, he raised “half a million dollars in donations from alumni and bitcoin enthusiasts” and the free BTC experiment was born. Were There Conditions To Get The Free BTC? The idea was for undergrad students to “complete a few questionnaires and review educational materials,” and to “set up their own crypto wallet, w...
