INTERCULTURAL STUDENT TEAMS DIVE INTO THE WORLD OF CRYPTO AT UCLL
College University UCLL paves the way to new financial innovations alongside 11 educational partners and RedCompass Labs in an international Fintech-project.
LEUVEN – 52 students of finance, insurance and accountancy originating from 8 different European countries joined forces at UCLL’s campus Proximus this week. In mixed groups, they worked with and battled against each other in order to develop both promising and viable ideas to hone their skills.
Bitcoin, NFTs, blockchain,… in the financial world, technological innovations follow each other in quick succession. But how can they be used safely and sustainably by the financial advisors of tomorrow? The European ‘blinded intensive programme’ (BIP) seeks to find an answer to that question, via a unique cooperation between 11 partnering schools from 8 different countries. UCLL-coach Stef Mannaerts explains the importance of this project within the growing cryptomarket: “Although many dabble in it, not everyone fully understands its intricacies. A BIP entrusts our schools to focus on these innovations for students who will be handling and advising people on financial matters daily as part of their future job.”
A COMPASS TO CRYPTO ACROSS BORDERS
The goal of the project is to encourage creativity and out-of-the-box thinking within the area of blockchain and cryptocurrency applications. Groups needed to develop a concept that has the potential to make a positive impact on the industry, for example to solve a current problem. Mannaerts emphasizes the importance of achievability after the brainstorm: “Brilliant ideas begin by keeping an open mind and then making clever decisions based on implementation, resources required, and potential for adoption. Whether or not it is realistic definitely also matters.”
In order to achieve this goal, the experts of RedCompass Labs joined the teachers as coaches for the students. RedCompass Labs aids financial services in their mission to deliver inclusive, profitable and secure end-to-end digital payments. Damian Dzienio, Business Analyst, is one of those of RedCompass Labs experts; “Within this project ‘Vires in Numeris’, strength in numbers, is a very suitable slogan. On the one hand they work in teams, showing the strength of several perspectives coming together. Aside from that, all in crypto is based on correct numbers and data.”
Student Theo Christiaens of the study trajectory ‘Finances and Insurances’ within the Bachelor Business Management, viewed the international character as a unique added value. “I would absolutely recommend this project to future students! It was particularly interesting to not only increase our knowledge of Financial technology but our language and intercultural application of it as well.”
Brilliant ideas begin by keeping an open mind and then making clever decisions based on implementation, resources required, and potential for adoption. Whether or not it is realistic definitely also matters.”
Stef Mannaerts, UCLL-coach
SMART BLOCKCHAIN CONT(R)ACTS
Within this project, RedCompass Labs also brought their expertise to the students via workshops. The company also provided 5 one-of-a-kind UCLL-NFT’s. Each piece of graphic art shows a combination of the RedCompass Labs and UCLL’s trademark mobius-ring. The teams battled one another to gain one of the top 3 spots and take an NFT home.
The ideas ranged from a new type of cryptocurrency to exploring novel use cases for smart contracts. The jury awarded team Smartiy the golden NFT for developing the strongest idea, keeping both creativity and viability in mind. They built an accessible application to ‘write’ smart contracts for blockchain. In order to create those contracts, plenty of computer coding is needed which normally would require the help of programmers. Using the application instead, even professionals who lack programming skills will still be capable to draft them up themselves. The smart contracts will be saved within the blockchain, so they can be applied automatically once certain requirements have been met.
The two remaining NFT’s were handed over to David Tibackx, general manager of RedCompass Labs Belgium, and Kim Plevoets, UCLL’s head of the Management programme. “To UCLL, it’s a an added value to be able to count on both RedCompass Labs and our partner schools to join forces with us,” says Plevoets. “We're very proud to be part of this project and look forward to many more.”
