MITOCW | 1. Introduction

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GARY GENSLER: Welcome, welcome. If you have a desire to learn a little bit about blockchain and its

intersection with the world of finance and money and you're looking for 15.S12, you're in the

right place. If you're here to not do that and just hang out and have a good time, I guess you

still hopefully are in the right place, because we're going to have a good time this semester.

My name is Gary Gensler. I'm a Senior Lecturer here at MIT Sloan.

I'm also an advisor over at the MIT Media Lab. And I've spent a lifetime around the world of

finance, and money, and public policy. And I've been at MIT this last eight months.

And we're going to learn a lot together about blockchain and money. We're going to have a

little bit of fun here and see what we're going to do. So we're talking about blockchain and

money. That's where we are.

By the way, I do cold call. I do call on you-- so if you want to leave now, I understand--

because I want to have an interaction a little bit about it. So my first question for the class, for

everyone, whether registered or not, how many of you have ever owned a cryptocurrency?

Wait, wait, let's see. It seems like it's about 45% of you or so. All right, so it gives me-- Alin you

want to keep your hand up long?

And how many of you have ever worked on any blockchain-related projects, in an

entrepreneurial setting, a corporate setting, anywhere? All right, good, so about a third in the

room. All right, so you all know probably more than I do, but I'm going to give it a shot.

I'm going to always start every week with what are the study questions for the week. How

many of you actually got the syllabus? This is not going to be graded assignment. I just have

to have a sense of who actually got this syllabus-- so a good many of you.

And how many of you actually did the two readings? It's not graded. I've just got to gauge the

class. Oh, thank you, thank you. Write those grades down, by the way--

[LAUGHTER]