Whitepaper V1.0 - Study Cash - The Coin for Students

Introduction

Background/Current situation/Problem

Some university students are borrowing money and therefore are in debt, some students cannot afford their higher education at all and also some university students struggles to balance the effect they put into getting good grades and the effort they put into making money to finance themselves.

This results in that some students are in massive debt when they finish university. Also, students don’t achieve the grades they could as they aren’t provided with enough incentive, because they also need to work to get money to finance themselves, causing further potential detriment to their grades.

What we found in our problem interviews, is that these problems are burdens in the lives of university students. A lot of students think an incentive would help them to get higher grades.

Solution

The solution to all these problems is simple, yet advanced. We build a cryptocurrency that rewards students for passing courses and getting good grades. Study Cash enables universities to join our programme which will automatically reward all their students with coins for their troubles. No more late night jobs affecting your grades.

The amount of coins you get cannot be based on an absolute grade. An absolute grade tells us nothing about how good you actually did. This is why the reward algorithm bases your reward on your relative grade. Your grade, compared to other students that are following the same course as you at the same time. This means that while you might ‘only’ have 67% correct on your exam, if most others had 60% or below your reward will be significantly higher than if everyone had 80% and above.

To claim their coins all a student would have to do is login on our website/app with their student account. The same one they use to login to, for example, their email and student portal. Only students from universities that provide us with all the grades from all their students will have access to our website. Only universities that are classified as a top 500 university by QS World University Rankings will be able to join the programme.

From the app/website students will be able to see their balance and its current FIAT (USD, EUR, GBP) value (and be able to instantly convert it to FIAT). From there they are also able to get more information on what everything means, how it works and where to go from here. Every student will be able to understand this cryptocurrency, not just IT students.

Goals

There is a long list of goals we have given ourselves. The first one is to make education cheaper for students. In some countries students protest every semester to try and have lower fees, because many cannot afford it. In other countries you either need a scholarship or be prepared to be hundred of thousands in debt.

We also want to get rid of the culture of mediocrity. Students do not have enough incentive to perform. There are tons of students that have no reason to go for a high GPA, while they are definitely able to. Our financial reward is very much alike a scholarship and it will help push those students to try harder and actually perform as they should.

Cryptocurrencies are still very much only for the technical under us, this has to change. We aim to provide this service to millions of students that do not have the technical expertise to go through complicated processes to get their coins, access their coins or, most importantly, sell their coins. The process needs to be as smooth as humanly possible.

Another eventual goal is for universities to also start accepting payment in this coin. Give the ability to students to for instance pay for their postgraduate education with the coins they earned during their undergraduate studies. This would most likely be through a payment processor offered by us.

Business model

Initial Coin Offering

To raise funds and get initial support from universities we will be doing an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). During the ICO investors can buy coins at a certain, still undetermined, price. We will also distribute coins to universities to help incentivise and pay for the costs of implementing our programme. Part of the ICO will be kept within the organisation for marketing purposes.

Coins/relative grade ratio

Behind the dispersion of coins is a complicated algorithm. The algorithm first looks at your score on a scale of 0-100. This means that a Dutch 5.5 is a 50, a South African 60% stays a 50, a US C is 70 and a German 3 is 70. Ideally we will get percentages of universities and not their respective grading system, but otherwise we will convert.
The system looks at the entire class and takes all their grades. The amount of students that passed equal the amount of coins that are being dispersed times 10. Then we take the average grade of everyone that passed and all the students that have exactly that average grade get 10 coins. The rest of the coins are given out in such a way that someone under the average grade gets fewer coins and someone with a higher grade gets more coins.

Collaboration with universities

To be able to give out coins automatically with this algorithm Study Cash needs access to all university grading records. These results should all be anonymized and securely sent to us. Only a student identifier should link the student’s account to our system.

Exchange

To be able to buy and sell coins with relative ease, Study Cash will also set up their own crypto exchange. From this exchange students are able to cash out their earnings, transfer their earnings or buy other coins.