Long Way To Normality

Yesterday while reading the news I came across an article about the first University in Romania accepting payments in crypto. Tuition fees in Romania are not as terrible as in the US and the good news is, student loans are not so common either. If you can pay for your education, you go to collage or university, otherwise you don't. This may sound harsh, but at least you don't start life with a huge debt to get a university diploma that could serve for nothing.

The news was a bit suspicious as in order for a state university to accept crypto payments, first it has to be a law voted by the Parliament and I haven't heard about any. Reading the article I found out that the cryptocurrency they decided to accept is Elrond (EGLD) developed by a Romanian start-up.

source

(EGLD seems to have reached its ATH at $243.92 yesterday.)

The news made it to Cointelegraph as well. Romanian university plans to accept crypto payments for admission fees.

Starting as an initial exchange offering from the Binance Launchpad in 2019, Elrond has offices in the Transylvanian town of more than 400,000 people, and its team contains many graduates of the local university. The project said it plans to carry out other collaborations with LBUS in the future, including research.

According to legislation implemented in July, exchange providers that monitor the purchase of crypto with fiat currency and vice versa must now be authorized if they operate in Romania. Many crypto users handling digital assets in the country are required to use exchanges that incorporate Know Your Customer requirements and comply with both domestic and foreign Anti-Money Laundering provisions. source.

As much as I'd like to enjoy this piece of news, unfortunately this is just the first step and may stay that way for a long time. Accepting crypto as a payment is what we're hoping for but in this case, crypto will be converted in local currency and that's what the university in question will get.

However, we have to be grateful for every little step taken towards the goal, which is wide acceptance of crypto. Even though in this case accepting crypto payments is limited to EGLD and payments are converted to local currency, I still hope in time we'll see the offer widened to include the main cryptocurrencies at least.

There are thousands of foreign students from all over the world, studying in different cities all across Romania. The number of foreign students is growing year by year. Moat likely it's easier to be accepted and cheaper, plus living costs must be cheaper to, compared to other countries.

I'd like to see the day when students can pay for education using their crypto assets, without going though exchanges and payment processors. The middleman must be eliminated, extra costs cut and process made simple.

One step at a time they say and this is a small step that may bring big changes. If other universities join, that alone is a win. The revolution has to start somewhere.

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