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The University of Wyoming has launched a Bitcoin research institute to produce high-quality peer-reviewed publications about bitcoin from all academic disciplines. The institute’s director highlighted the need for informed research, criticizing previous work for its lack of fundamental understanding of bitcoin.
University of Wyoming Launches Bitcoin Research Institute
The University of Wyoming (UW) has launched the UW Bitcoin Research Institute (BRI), a 501c(3) nonprofit. Dr. Bradley Rettler, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the university, is the director of the newly launched Bitcoin Institute. He announced on social media platform X on July 28:
The University of Wyoming has established the UW Bitcoin Research Institute … The BRI aims to produce high-quality peer-reviewed publications about bitcoin from all academic disciplines.
“Much academic bitcoin research is quite poor, because it’s done by people who don’t understand bitcoin,” Rettler explained. He emphasized the significance of understanding bitcoin to produce valuable research, noting that much existing academic work on bitcoin falls short due to a lack of fundamental knowledge.
He noted that Mora et al predicted Bitcoin alone could push emissions up by 2 degrees, but they failed to account for the difficulty adjustment and the block size cap. Additionally, he highlighted that many, including Nassim Nicholas Taleb who wrote “Bitcoin Black Paper,” are unaware of Layer 2 solutions like Lightning or Bitcoin’s supply cap, which is one of its most distinctive features. Furthermore, he pointed out that others make faulty assumptions about bitcoin user demographics.
“These mistakes make their way into journalism, and policy. Bitcoin is multi-faceted in theory, and even more so in practice. Journalists can’t be experts, so they rely on academics. Too many of those academics have let them down,” he stressed, adding:
More academic work on bitcoin should be done by people who understand bitcoin. The BRI aims to produce that work, which will filter up to journalists and policymakers.