UATX, The College of Austin, Texas, is rediscovering and redefining educational pursuit. Based in 2021, the start-up college stands as a protest to the mental dogma and the “woke” radicalization of main universities lately, focusing as an alternative on entrepreneurship and getting ready college students for a technologically and culturally advanced future.
These previous values, rekindled by the chaos of modernity, have led UATX to Bitcoin: “The primary ideas of this establishment share the identical area, language, and ethos as the primary ideas behind Bitcoin: freedom of speech, freedom to transact, particular person and institutional sovereignty, distributed decentralized governing construction,” Anthony J. Rosario, major gifts and bitcoin endowment officer at UATX, instructed Bitcoin Journal.
UATX has been making waves in latest weeks and months with quite a lot of Bitcoin-related bulletins, amongst them the publication of “The Satoshi Papers,” a e-book comprising a set of political, social, and financial essays debating the influence and nature of Bitcoin, echoing the Federalist Papers (popularized in the course of the founding of the United States). Additionally they introduced a bitcoin endowment fund, one of many first within the nation, and so they boast a Bitcoin and cryptocurrency curriculum led by Dr. Thomas L. Hogan, which supplies college students hands-on expertise with the know-how and business. A lot in order that Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, just lately tweeted he’ll be “recruiting new faculty grads from UATX,” including that, “It aligns nicely with our apolitical tradition. Let’s hope we see extra apolitical universities emerge over time.”
A Protest Towards Cancel Tradition and Mental Rigidity in Academia
“Loads of our college and workers got here to UATX as a result of they had been uninterested in the mental rigidity and cancel tradition at their earlier establishments,” Maggie Kelly, chief development officer at UATX instructed Bitcoin Journal. She added that, “We’re actually attempting to create a spot the place folks can come and suppose freely and discover concepts with out concern of being canceled or silenced, which is a big downside in academia as we speak.”
UATX was founded by journalist Bari Weiss, historian Niall Ferguson, enterprise capitalist Joe Lonsdale, on the time the president of St. John’s School, and Pano Kanelos, who had criticized the “intolerant” nature of conventional universities in trendy instances.
Kanelos, founding president and now chancellor of the College, put it greatest in a Free Press article in 2021, “Almost 1 / 4 of American lecturers within the social sciences or humanities endorse ousting a colleague for having a fallacious opinion about hot-button points resembling immigration or gender variations.”
Citing a report by the Middle for the Research of Partisanship and Ideology. Kalenos identified that “over a 3rd of conservative lecturers and PhD college students stated they’d been threatened with disciplinary motion for his or her views and 4 out of 5 American PhD college students are keen to discriminate in opposition to right-leaning students.”
Daring to suppose in another way and compelled to tackle a start-up mindset, regardless of being a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the UATX has a robust deal with entrepreneurship, historical past, economics, and classical Western philosophical thought — highly effective and elementary concepts that inevitably led them to Bitcoin.
The UATX Bitcoin Curriculum
The Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency curriculum on the College of Austin is led by Affiliate Professor of Economics Dr. Hogan, who has deep experience in economics and academia. He was previously the chief economist for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and City Affairs, and has labored on the American Institute for Financial Analysis (AIER), the Cato Institute, the World Financial institution, and Merrill Lynch’s commodity buying and selling group, amongst others.
“Our introductory course is a mixture of information acquisition and sensible expertise. College students examine the origins of Bitcoin, the mechanics of the community, and the way Bitcoin helps defend human rights. On the identical time, they get to put in a pockets, make trades on Bitcoin and Lightning, and spin up their very own Bitcoin miner,” Dr. Hogan instructed Bitcoin Journal.
In contrast to different on-line assets and academic supplies, UATX leans into its shut connections with the Bitcoin business in Texas, unlocking a private and hands-on expertise with the know-how. Jack Platts from Hypersphere Ventures donated bitcoin to the scholars, whereas Cholla Inc, Gideon Powell, and Brad Cuddy donated Antminer S9 miners that college students arrange of their dorms (which they used to hitch a mining pool). Pierre Rochard has given visitor lectures, guiding college students by Lightning Community transactions. The category even had a discipline journey to Riot’s mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, the place an previous aluminum smelting facility has been turned by Riot right into a Bitcoin mine. College students obtained books like “Gradually, Then Suddenly,” “The Satoshi Papers,” “Resistance Money,” and “The Genesis Block.”
Whereas the Bitcoin curriculum has not been marketed a lot, Rosario revealed that the course “was the second hottest course that college students bid on utilizing our free market bidding system the place they use factors to pick their programs. The one course that beat it out was a particular elective by Niall Ferguson.”
“Past Bitcoin, the scholars study concerning the distinctive elements of different tokens and blockchains. They program and deploy fundamental good contracts and discover how these instruments can be utilized to construct programs for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Decentralized Bodily Infrastructure (DePIN),” added Dr. Hogan, who believes the general public and verifiable nature of cryptographic finance has the potential to section out fraud and corruption present in legacy finance.
When requested concerning the novel dangers of crypto scams and Ponzi schemes, meme cash, rug pulls, and so forth — particularly how the college offers with these subjects from an academic perspective — Rosario addressed the priority by saying that, “The easiest way we educate college students about fraud, not simply in digital belongings however of their careers and lives, is by offering an mental basis on the core of our curriculum that builds their thoughts and character. Our college students are extremely agentic, right here to construct an establishment, not simply attend a college. Our tagline is the fearless pursuit of reality, instructing the mental foundations of the Western custom, from historical Greeks to trendy philosophers and economists. When instructing half on Bitcoin and half on cryptocurrency, UATX is ecumenical. To construct the lifetime of the thoughts, college students should be launched to totally different concepts.”
Dr. Hogan emphasised the transparency and reliability of blockchains as in comparison with conventional monetary networks. “In contrast to an opaque monetary firm, the funds in a sensible contract can simply be verified on the blockchain. In contrast to a financial institution switch or inventory commerce which may take days to clear, transactions on the blockchain could be verified inside minutes,” he defined, including that, “In distinction, failed firms like FTX and the Celsius Community weren’t decentralized firms constructed on blockchain know-how. They had been conventional monetary firms that failed for a similar previous causes: extreme threat and outright fraud. Transferring to blockchain-based programs will assist stop such collapses sooner or later.”
Dr. Hogan shared the unique schedule of courses and visitor lecturers with Bitcoin Journal, as seen under:
Half 1: Bitcoin
Week 1: Intro to Bitcoin and blockchains
Week 2: The Bitcoin and Lightning networks (Pierre Rochard)
Week 3: Bitcoin and human rights (Craig Warmke)
Week 4: Bitcoin mining and power economics
Week 5: The way forward for Bitcoin (Will Cole and Parker Lewis)
Half 2: Cryptocurrency and blockchain know-how
Week 6: Cryptocurrency and good contracts
Week 7: Decentralized finance (DeFi)
Week 8: Webpage and blockchain interactions (Phil Greenwald)
Week 9: Utility tokens and decentralized bodily infrastructure (Kyle Samani)
Week 10: The way forward for crypto and blockchains
Bitcoin in Educational Discourse: The Satoshi Papers
Past instructing Bitcoin to their college students, UATX has led a dialog concerning the societal that means and influence of Bitcoin in educational circles. In February of 2025, the college hosted the Satoshi Papers Symposium, a day of educational lectures celebrating the launch of the e-book by the Texas Bitcoin Basis (TBF).
The Satoshi Papers, printed by the Bitcoin Coverage Institute (BPI) and edited by TBF govt director and BPI fellow Natalie Smolenski, “attracts inspiration from the 18th-century American debate between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists concerning the position of presidency in preserving the liberties of people and communities.”
The e-book incorporates a collection of essays from quite a lot of students together with economists, historians, anthropologists, and different social scientists, discussing the connection between cash and state in a post-Bitcoin world.
A Bitcoin Endowment In Self Custody
As well as from their academic and educational contributions to Bitcoin, UATX additionally maintain the asset in a custom-designed Bitcoin Endowment, and in contrast to many different universities who additionally carry bitcoin publicity through ETFs, the college has a robust perception in self custody, securing the funds in multisignature wallets in collaboration with Unchained Capital, an instrumental associate within the college’s foray into Bitcoin.
Joe Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Unchained, donated 2 bitcoin to the Endowment to kick-start it; the college is actively elevating a $5-million fund in bitcoin, which they’ve dedicated to holding in chilly storage for at the least 5 years.
Throughout the announcement made in June 2024, Kelly stated, “Each UATX and the Bitcoin group are constructing progressive establishments for the longer term. By selecting Unchained as a associate, the college is signaling its evaluation of bitcoin’s perform as a freedom-preserving know-how, with our custody mannequin serving to to make sure there isn’t any single level of failure to UATX’s long-term bitcoin holdings.”
