The post The Next Ethereum Will Come From a Dorm Room (or a College Dropout) appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Before Ethereum had a market cap, it was just an idea in a college dropout’s head. Crypto’s biggest companies aren’t being planned in boardrooms. They’re being built in dorm rooms, group chats, and hackathons by founders who don’t wait for permission (many of them don’t finish college at all). This is not a coincidence. It’s a repeat of a pattern we’ve seen before: bold ideas, early action, and zero regard for institutional timelines. In 2014, a group of students launched the Blockchain Education Network (BEN) to connect students exploring bitcoin and blockchain across college campuses. Within a year, BEN had grown to over 160 chapters in more than 35 countries. What started as grassroots education quickly became a launchpad for builders. BEN became a catalyst for its core members and for a global cohort of students who saw crypto as a blank canvas. Some dropped out. Others stayed in. Nearly all started building before the rest of the world caught on. Projects fostered by that ecosystem have gone on to collectively reach over $20 billion in peak valuations, including IOTA, Optimism, Bitso, Augur, Wanchain, Notional and Roll. That same spirit of early action led me and Erick Pinos, former president of MIT’s Bitcoin Club, to co-found Dropout Capital, backing young, technical founders who move before the world notices. Erick Pinos will speak at Consensus 2025 on May 16 in a panel titled “The Talent Pipeline: How to Find a Job in Crypto.” As Pinos puts it: “Over the past seven years we’ve met with countless student founders and at least half a dozen have become unicorns…we’re excited to give others the opportunity to be a part of funding the next generation of blockchain innovation.” This urgency isn’t new. It’s the same drive that shaped early tech giants. Steve Jobs (Apple),…

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Filed under: News - @ May 1, 2025 10:25 pm