A Romanian public university in Sibiu City, Transylvania is the latest academic institution to adopt cryptocurrencies as a mode of payment for its admission fees.
In a press release Wednesday, the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (LBUS) announced its plans to launch a crypto-payment gateway for its students by July this year. LBUS has more than 11,000 students in total.
Once completed, the new payments option will enable students to make cryptocurrency payments for admission fees using Elrond (EGLD), a native token of the Elrond Network, which LBUS will then convert into Romanian leu, the country’s official currency.
“Our university has been and will continue to be a supporter of the community and local business,” CoinTelegraph quoted LBUS Rector Sorin Radu as saying. “The decision to develop this partnership with Elrond is part of this strategy,” he added.
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu charges, on average, $1,000 annually for undergraduate students.
The Elrond Network
The Elrond Network, a public blockchain, had its ICO (Initial Coin Offering) in 2019 through the Binance Launchpad. It was created with interoperability, high throughput, and high-level scalability.
Elrond’s technological allure includes adaptive state sharding, secure proof of stake, and Elrond VM, which is a WASM-based contract execution engine.
“With the unique Adaptive State Sharding and Secure Proof of Stake, the project promises speed and scalability that hasn’t been seen from many projects,” Steve Walters of the Coin Bureau commented on Elrond in his review.
Elrond has offices in Transylvania and staffs its teams with graduates from local universities.
Academic institutions join crypto bandwagon
Prior to LBSU’s announcement, there has already been a handful of academic institutions that implemented cryptocurrency payment gateways across the world.
Some of the first to accept Bitcoin as tender include the King’s College in New York, the University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom, the European School of Management and Technology in Germany, and the University of Nicosia in Cyprus.
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