Two students at the USA’s prestigious engineering and technology university MIT have raised $500,000 to conduct an experiment that will see every undergraduate handed $100 of the digital currency Bitcoin later this year.

Jeremy Rubin, who is studying electrical engineering and computer science, and Dan Elitzer, founder and President of the MIT Bitcoin Club and a first-year in the MBA program at MIT Sloan, raised the money so that it could be used in a test of how students use the Bitcoin they receive, as well as to spur academic and entrepreneurial activity around the crypto-currency.