Key Findings 42 percent of the world’s top 50 universities now offer at least one course on crypto or blockchain Students from a range of majors are interested in crypto and blockchain courses — and universities are adding courses across a variety of departments Original Coinbase research includes a Qriously survey of 675 U.S. students, a comprehensive review of courses at 50 international universities, and interviews with professors and students When David Yermack, the finance department chair at New York University Stern School of Business, first offered his course on blockchain and financial services in 2014, 35 students signed up, eight fewer than the school’s typical elective.

By spring 2018, the number of enrolled students climbed to 230, forcing Stern to move the class to its largest auditorium. This academic year, Yermack will teach the blockchain course both semesters to meet interest from students.

Yermack says he first developed the class because he was interested in bitcoin and how quickly interest in the cryptocurrency was growing. But other reasons soon emerged, notably demand from companies for people who understood cryptocurrency-related issues. Now, he sees his class as a way to give students the skills they’ll need for jobs in the future.

“A process is well underway that will lead to the migration of most financial data to blockchain-based organizations,” he says. “Students will benefit greatly by studying this area.”

Similar scenes are playing out at top universities around the world. Students are flocking to classes on cryptocurrency and blockchain — the “distributed ledger” technology that makes decentralized financial systems work — motivated in part by a hot job market for graduates with training in those fields.

Universities, in turn, are forming research centers and adding more crypto-related courses, in part to meet rising demand and also because they now see cryptocurrency as an area worthy of serious academic study.

Coinbase reviewed course catalogs at the top 50 universities and found cryptocurrency classes across a variety of departments, including anthropology and finance — not only computer science.

In fact, the rise in offerings across disciplines maps to student interest: Students with a diverse set of majors say they’d like to take cryptocurrency classes, according to a Coinbase survey conducted in partnership with Qriously. Nearly half of all social science majors expressed interest in taking a crypto class.

One possible reason for such diverse interest in blockchain is its potential to impact society across many domains. “Blockchain combines theory and practice and can lead to fundamental breakthroughs in many research areas,” says Dawn Song, a computer science professor at University of California, Berkeley. “It can have really profound and broad-scale impacts on society in many different industries.”

To assess the current landscape of cryptocurrency in higher education, Coinbase analyzed the courses at the world’s top 50 universities as ranked by U.S. News and World Report. Our study focused on classes available to undergraduate-level students in the fall 2018 semester or the most recent semester for which information was available online.

The analysis found that 42 percent of the top 50 universities offer at least one class on blockchain or cryptocurrency, and 22 percent offer more than one. Expanding the results to include longstanding foundational classes on cryptography, 70 percent of universities offer at least one crypto-related class.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency courses are most prominent in the U.S. Only five of the 18 international universities on the list, or 27 percent, offer at least one class on blockchain or cryptocurrency. And only two — Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and National University of Singapore — offer more than one.

Johns Hopkins University offers a business course on blockchain, where students learn about its security features and “the potential benefits and weaknesses of its fundamental structure as applied to businesses and organizations,” according to the school’s course catalog.

At Princeton, students can take an information-security class focused on secure computing systems, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and related economics, ethics, and legal issues.

Cornell offers the highest number of classes when including cryptography, cryptocurrency, or blockchain. The 28 courses include “Anthropology of Money” and “Introduction to Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies, and Smart Contracts,” which covers the cryptocurrency bitcoin and “the technological landscape it has inspired and catalyzed,” according to the course description.

More than half of the universities analyzed offer at least one class on cryptography, the study of creating and solving coded messages and a key technical foundation for blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

“The techniques used in blockchain aren’t necessarily new,” says Song, as it draws on areas such as cryptography, game theory, and distributed systems. These are areas “where research and even education has been around for a really long time.”

Stanford launched its Center for Blockchain Research this summer to bring together students and faculty from across the school’s departments to work on various aspects of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

Dan Boneh, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University and co-director of the center, said that every time he talks with a new team in the group he finds himself walking away with three new research ideas. “There are new technical questions being raised by blockchain projects that we would not work on otherwise,” he says.

Other leading universities that are known for strong engineering programs are adding courses and programs centered around blockchain, too. The University of Waterloo, Georgetown University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are among those expanding their research and course offerings.

At Berkeley, Song co-taught a course in the spring semester of 2018 on “Blockchain, Cryptoeconomics, and the Future of Technology, Business and Law.” It was a collaboration between the school’s computer science, business, and law schools and admitted an equal number of students from each school.

Song says the course was “hugely popular,” noting that the instructors had to turn away more than 200 students because their classroom only had a 70-student capacity.

That interdepartmental approach may emerge as a hallmark of cryptocurrency and blockchain education, given the number of departments that are currently offering classes on the subject. Coinbase’s analysis found that of the 172 classes listed by the top 50 universities, 15 percent were offered by business, economics, finance, and law departments, and four percent were in social science departments such as anthropology, history, and political science.

Harvey says students recognize how in-demand this kind of knowledge is now. “If you’re graduating from law school it’s a tough market these days,” Harvey says. “However, the law students that are trained in blockchain, they don’t need to apply anywhere. People are just asking them to join their firms.”

Among students, interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain cuts across fields. In fact, more social science majors — 47 percent — said they were interested in learning about cryptocurrency than computer science and engineering majors — 34 percent — according to a survey of 675 U.S. students commissioned by Coinbase and conducted by Qriously.

The survey found that 17 percent of computer science and engineering majors have already taken a course that focuses on cryptocurrency and blockchain, as have 15 percent of economics and math majors and 11 percent of business majors. Just five percent of social science majors have taken such a course, the survey found.

Among all students surveyed, 17 percent said they consider their knowledge of cryptocurrency and blockchain very good, compared to just nine percent of the general population surveyed at the same time. Similarly, 18 percent of students said they own (or have owned) cryptocurrency, twice the rate of the general population.

A quarter of all students said they would definitely or probably take a course focused on cryptocurrency or blockchain.

“There’s tremendous excitement” among students right now, says Benedikt Bünz, a doctoral student at Stanford focusing on cryptocurrencies.

Bünz was pursuing a master’s degree in artificial intelligence when he took a cryptography class. That sparked his interest in cryptocurrencies, setting the direction for his doctoral degree.

People often approach Bünz asking if he’d be able to recommend someone with knowledge of cryptocurrencies for a job, he says, but the high demand means all the candidates he knows already have positions secured.

These days, he says, “if you’re an expert in cryptocurrencies and cryptography you’ll have a difficult time not finding a job.”

There are also plenty of options for people not currently enrolled at a university to learn more about crypto. Online learning sites like Udemy, Coursera, edX, and Udacity offer hundreds of courses, including general lessons in foundational cryptography and more specialized classes on blockchain and cryptocurrency.

These classes draw on a range of experts, including professors from some of the top 50 global universities and practitioners in the field. For instance, Coinbase Chief Technology Officer Balaji S. Srinivasan is one of several industry experts featured as part of the Udacity nanondegree program called “Become a Blockchain Developer.” The program has two three-month terms and is focused on “mastering job-ready skills with a hands-on approach.”

Academia isn’t known for moving quickly. But professors say that the maturation of blockchain and cryptocurrency and their adoption by businesses and other groups over the last few years has made it clear that it’s a field with the potential for wide-ranging impact. And that’s causing universities to take it seriously. “You need to prepare your students for the future,” Duke’s Harvey says, and “blockchain is not going away.”

A note on methodology Coinbase analyzed the courses currently offered at the world’s top 50 universities as ranked by U.S. News and World Report: Best Global Universities 2018. Our study focused on classes available to undergraduate-level students in the fall 2018 semester or the most recent semester for which information was available online. The research excluded classes that are graduate-level only. It left in classes that are open to undergraduate and graduate students or classes that were not clearly marked as graduate-level only. Results for the search term “crypto” were excluded from the tallies and course descriptions listing if they were clearly unrelated to cryptocurrency or the foundational math principles underlying the technology.

To assess student sentiments about crypto, Coinbase also commissioned a study conducted by Qriously of 675 U.S. students ages 16 and older. The general population survey included 6,011 respondents over the age of 16.

While some people wish they invested in great opportunities before they went mainstream, other investors did just that. They found great investments before they became great investments and loaded up accordingly.

Some investors made life changing returns from Apple, Amazon, and more recently GameStop stock. You won’t make life changing returns from those stocks anymore unless you invest significant money into those stocks.

GameStop for instance has gone up 1,784% so far this year. The stock could still hit $1,000/share based on the sentiment behind it and how people see the stock more for its movement rather than its fundamentals.

However, it’s not like GameStop will go up an additional 1,784% this year. It can double, triple, and perhaps do more than that. However, for GameStop to go up an extra 1,784%, it would have to become a $400B company. Meanwhile, GameStop is currently valued at $22B.

The higher a stock’s market cap, the more difficult it is to further achieve “to the moon” type returns. Apple stock is a $2.2T company. For it to quadruple in price, Apple would have to roughly become a $10T company. More people have to act together to influence the stock price of a trillion dollar company versus a company with a market cap under $1B which is where GameStop was before the mania took place.

What Happened Back Then? The first step to finding stocks that double before everyone else is to ask yourself how and why people noticed stocks like Apple and Amazon in the late 90s and early 2000s.

What was the prevailing narrative that tipped off some investors to buy these companies? And no…don’t just guess. It’s easy to just say, “Well, of course, the internet was just coming out,” when talking about Amazon and, “It was the iPhone,” for Apple.

Figure out what people were saying back then and what analysts were saying (for the more modern success stories, you could also check social media, but that option wasn’t available in the early days of stocks like Apple and Amazon).

In December 1995, Amazon was averaging roughly 2,200 daily visitors to its site. In March 1997, Amazon was averaging roughly 80,000 daily visitors to their site. That’s a 3,636% increase in daily visitors to Amazon’s site in under 2 years, and this was back when Amazon just sold books.

In 1996, Amazon grew its revenue by 2,982%, an extraordinary feat that was masked with small numbers. If Amazon were to do that today, it would be news shattering. However, Amazon “only” went from $511,000 to $15.75 million. The growth is incredible but the numbers were small enough for most people not to notice.

Amazon went public with a $438M market cap, a far cry from the current $1.6T valuation.

Eye popping revenue growth and daily user growth for a company just selling books. Jeff Bezos started with books because they were among the easiest items to package.

The company was already in growth mode with many potential catalysts. What if Amazon decided to not just sell books? Could they see similar growth numbers across a range of product industries?

The internet’s growth was also a major catalyst for Amazon, so you had to factor that into your thesis. From 1995 to 1999, internet usage grew from 16 million users to 248 million users. Hyper growth was the norm, and if you bought a book on Amazon in the 90s, you probably enjoyed the fact that the book came to you instead of you making a commute to the bookstore.

If you can combine hyper growth numbers with you using, understanding, and enjoying the company, it’s easier for someone to invest into the company early on.

Finding Under The Radar Companies For several years, Amazon was an under the radar company. Their stock price collapse during the DotCom Crash and investors rushing for the exits didn’t help.

Before we can find stocks that go up 1,000% in the future, we have to get better at finding under the radar companies.

Under the radar companies usually have market caps below $10B. The lower the market cap, the more under the radar a stock tends to be. Finding companies with low market caps presents more room for a 1,000% return.

You’ll have to do a lot of digging to find under the radar stocks, and you’ll stumble on most of them by accident. AcuityAds is an under the radar CTV stock that you wouldn’t know to search for.

You might stumble across that stock if you do some research on a more well-known CTV stock such as Roku or The Trade Desk. People in the comments section of an article or video may mention stocks like AcuityAds, Magnite, Perion, and others.

Pay attention to the stocks other people recommend and search their tickers on Google, and see what comes up.

A more advanced approach involves using a stock screener to find stocks that fit certain criteria (i.e. EPS growth, recent stock price movement, sector, revenue growth, and other factors).

I prefer to browse through comments and stumble across stocks in the former approach, but the latter approach can produce great investing opportunities more catered to you.

Determining The Winning Stocks Once you find several under the radar companies, the final step is doing your research to determine which companies make the most sense for your portfolio.

There are plenty of under the radar stocks that will skyrocket in a few years, but there are also plenty of under the radar stocks that will plummet or stay flat for many years. How do we distinguish future winners from future duds?

Every analysis begins with the numbers. That’s where we get a better understanding of the growth narrative and the company’s past results. Yahoo! Finance allows you to see the revenue and earnings growth of any company for the past few years.

If the company isn’t reporting profits yet, you should look for narrowing losses and accelerating revenue. If revenue decelerates or grows at a slow pace, it’s very likely the stock price won’t budge too much.

In this current market, revenue growth is the major driver. Profitability eventually matters, but most under the radar stocks will start with losses…just as Amazon did in its early days. In fact, Amazon didn’t initially narrow their losses as their revenue grew. In the short-term, Amazon’s losses expanded as their revenue grew because they made investments into the business.

If a company has been growing its revenue by 20% or more over the past few years, we have a potential winner.

After you look at revenue growth, look at the stock’s ratios. You can also find these over on Yahoo! Finance. For unprofitable companies, I look at the P/S ratio. The closer it is to 1, the better.

However, some stocks with P/S ratios above 1 will be undervalued if you compare them to other companies in the same industry.

Take Alpha and Omega Semiconductor (AOSL) as an example. They have a P/S close to 1.5. Compare that to Broadcom and Texas Instruments which have P/S ratios of 8 and 11 separately. Those two companies have progressed much further than AOSL, but even if AOSL just got its P/S ratio up to 3, it would result in the stock price doubling…and it would still be undervalued from a P/S standpoint.

You don’t want to compare e-commerce stocks with financial stocks because the e-commerce stocks would then always look overvalued. Compare e-commerce stocks with other e-commerce stocks to determine if something is overvalued or undervalued.

Sometimes you won’t get everything you want in a single stock. AOSL doesn’t hit my revenue benchmark but I still have shares because recent quarters have showcased promising results. This is why you should invest in multiple under the radar stocks instead of just loading up on a single under the radar stock.

Since fewer people know about these stocks, it’s easier to find them at bargain prices. They won’t be bargain stocks if they become mainstream, but that will be fine with you if you get into these stocks before they become mainstream.

Sometimes you’ll spend hours researching for stocks only to find nothing exciting. On other days, you’ll find solid stocks the market is overlooking. Once in a while, you might find a life changing investment opportunity.

And I wanted to maybe learn what I did wrong so I could start thinking how to make it back.

I was a gambler at heart. I went from playing poker every day to playing the stock market every day. That’s mistake #1. I had to end that habit. I hope I did. 17 years later I still hope every day that I ended that addiction.

But I did learn. Although I wish I had been smarter about learning. I wish I had read all of these books I’m about to recommend.

Now I’ve read them. Some of them are inspirational. Some are educational. Some are about famous investors. Some are by famous investors sharing what they’ve learned.

Anyone who reads all of these books will understand the stock market and investing at a very deep level.

Warren Buffett has his famous two rules about investing. But I would say for myself the biggest thing I learned were these ideas:

• When you own a stock, you own part of a company. So study what makes a good company.

• Risk management is everything. Which means keep your positions very small.

• The unexpected always happens.

• I had to model myself after the greatest investors in history.

• Politics is short-term, economics is medium term, innovation is long-term.

I’ve since run a successful hedge fund, fund of hedge funds, I’ve done many successful angel investments, and I’ve written about stocks and investing for 17 years in books, in the Wall Street Journal, in the Financial Times, and with regular appearances on CNBC.

Here’s the books I recommend to get started (note: this is the start).

– “Essays of Warren Buffett” by Lawrence Cunningham

– “Reminiscences of a Stock Market Operator” by Edwin LeFevre

– “Famous First Bubbles” by Peter Garber

– “Super Money” by Adam Smith

– “The Money Game” by Adam Smith

– “Confessions of a Street Addict” by Jim Cramer

– “Market Wizards” by Jack Schwager

– “Hedge Fund Market Wizards” by Jack Schwager

– “You Too Can Be a Stock Market Genius” by Joel Greenblatt

– “The Little Book of Value Investing“

– “Warren Buffet” by Roger Lowenstein

– “When Genius Failed” by Roger Lowenstein

– “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis

– “Flash Boys” by Michael Lewis

– “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis

– “The Coffee Trader” by David Liss (fiction)

– “Billion Dollar Sure Thing” by Paul E. Erdman (or any of his financial thrillers from the 70s)

– “My Own Story” by Bernard Baruch

– “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” by Charlie Munger

– “Damn Right!” (biography of Charlie Munger) by Janet Lowe

– “Education of a Value Investor” by Guy Spier

– “Abundance” by Peter Diamandis

– Joel Greenblatt’s “The Little Book That Still Beats the Market“

– Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Too Big to Fail“

– “Dhando Investor” by Mohnish Pabrai

– “Money” by Tony Robbins

– “The Black Swan” by Nassim Taleb

– “Fooled by Randomness” by Nassim Taleb

– “A Man for All Markets” by Ed Thorp

Read these and your life will change.