Topic: MIT’s bookstore to accept Bitcoins from students (Read 1450 times)

When I was in college, the bookstore would only buy back books that would actually be used the following semester (often times a new edition would come out with essentially no changes except for the edition number). If the book was no longer the "latest and the greatest" then they would offer nothing for it (I never heard anything about giving it back to the vendor publisher).

To answer your specific question: the bookstore likely uses either bitpay or coinbase to process the bitcoin payments, converting the payment to fiat right away. I would personally doubt that the bookstore would bother with giving bitcoin for used books.

With that being said, most campuses (I am not sure about MIT specifically) have both for profit companies that deal in used books and somewhat of a P2P market for used books. I would think there would be a good chance that users of a potential P2P market would deal in bitcoin and that the for profit companies may give payment in bitcoin for used books

This can help spreading the word about bitcoins among students worldwide.

so what does that work out to, about 5btc per semester?

When I was in college, they had the "student" book store, where they sold the used books. You could get about 1/3 back and buy used at about 1/5 off new pricing. I don't know if they had any buyback from vendors. I do remember that the model was dying, as a number of the professors were creating their own books, or supplemental book. They of course had a revised edition just about every other term to guarantee new sales, which killed any buyback opportunity.

I heard two of the MIT Bitcoin Club guys speak at the NYC Bitcoin Center a couple months ago. They hadn't figured it out yet exactly at that time, but they are planning to do something along the lines of what you're proposing. I don't know the specifics.

Buyback does exist. It all depends on how the store runs it.
College bookstores tend to not hire much IT, so they often heavily rely on packaged solutions from vendors that roll the entire program into one system. Managing the supply and demand for a book, determining how much a book is worth at a given moment, and where that bookstore should send it to be resold (since not all buyback books go back on the shelf at the same school). This is a lot easier for stores to manage if they don't have to deal with those logistics.

In some schools, the money is handled by the actual store, so they pay you out of their own account, then bill the buyback vendor for those books. (Minus the ones that they keep for themselves)

In other stores, it's the other way around, where you're given the vendor's money, and the bookstore ships away what it doesn't want and pays the vendor back for what it does. (This is easier for accounting because the store doesn't have this new type of transaction that's always a refund, them gets offset a month later. They just buy what they keep as if they bought it from any other publisher, and ship away the rest without having to deal with it because it never goes through the regular till or inventory).

So if a store is implementing the second system, they're really at the mercy of what the vendor will offer for refunds. And with the first system, volatility is an issue as always, since the store might not get the dollars back for those books for a few weeks.

Only the bookstore !!! THEY should accept it everywhere...

Do they have a book buyback program? Do they even have these anymore? If so, I wonder if they could get paid in Bitcoin?

Good job, I think the freshmen from MIT received some Bitcoins for free this year, so they can buy books. Hopefully other services also accept bitcoin.

I think this is good news but it may be better to provide the 100 dollars to each student in a staggered format. Instead of 100 lump sum maybe 2 payments of $50, 1 at the beginning of the semester and 1 at the middle or at the start of next semester. Or 4 payments of $25. This would also protect students from getting hit hard by a large drop in price by dollar cost averaging it for them.

Here's a fun thought: the price can remain stagnant, or even drop, and all this transacting through Bitcoin network can continue.

I hope this doesn't funnel 95% of the bestowed BTC out of their budding economy before it even gets rolling.

The Coop in Kendal Square (MIT's bookstore) also has a Bitcoin ATM in it

I would think the rational behind this is due to the fact that MIT students have received $100 worth of bitcoin they now likely want to spend it somehow. Since college books are horribly overpriced, and college students are generally poor, what better way to capture some additional money from students then accepting bitcoin to get more of a student's limited amount of money?

Educational sector's acceptance of bitcoin may lead to huge publicity of the coin amongst the people.It is a good news

It's a 3rd party shoop in MIT or an official MIT bookstore? 

This is great news. Students are the ones that do need to be targeted I feel as they may have more of an interest in bitcoin. It's one way to get the word out there, show them that bitcoin is not as bad as many make it out to be and that it is the future if people do give it a chance. Looking forward to seeing how well this works.

Misleading title. This is a third-party bookstore.

Some news say some universities offer BTC related course, which wil escalate the adoption between students. Campus retail shop will let the students experience purchasing something with BTC. If the students from this generation get education about BTC. After gratuating from school, they definitely will be supportive force of the masses adoption of BTC.

That's really nice, if the new students will start to adopt bitcoins then the word will spread in no time.