The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) could play a crucial role for bitcoin in the near future, as Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, has suggested hosting a Bitcoin standards body at the institution.
While speaking to Xconomy, a high-tech economy news site, Ito said that he is close to reveal plans for the institute to set up an independent and neutral home for the development of Bitcoin standards.
"With Bitcoin, it was sort of on the Internet, but the financial interests got very involved before there was a lot of standards setting. (...) It's going at hyper-speed, much faster than any other standards body. And you have the added problem that there's a lot of money involved. Even the developers have lots of Bitcoin, right? What I'd like to do as a contribution from MIT (...) is to try to come up with a non-commercial, neutral place for academics to talk about Bitcoin", he told Xconomy while explaining the need for a Bitcoin standards body.
