If you are reading our cryptocurrency news daily, you probably know that 56% of the world's top 50 universities now offer at least one course on cryptocurrency or blockchain. This is a number that is up from 42% in 2018 - and something that shows that crypto education is getting mainstream. Twice as many students report having taken a crypto or blockchain course compared to the 2018 levels - and nearly 70% of the crypto and blockchain classes are in departments outside of computer science which include law, humanities and economics. Stats aside, are you wondering which are the actual leaders in crypto education out there? A report by Coinbase on Higher Education pictures all of the leaders and crypto classes from 2019. This is actually a second annual study which was carried out by the leading exchange which broadened their methodology, analyzing a more comprehensive set of determining factors. In order to access the current landscape of cryptocurrency in higher education, Coinbase reviewed the course catalogs of the top 50 global universities (rankings from US News And World Report) in a study that focused on classes available to undergraduate and graduate-level students in 2019 for which information was available online. Now, the list shows that the leaders in crypto education are the following:

1. Cornell University
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. New York University
4. Stanford University
5. Ecole Polytechnique Federale of Lausanne
6. University of California - Berkeley
7. Columbia University
8. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
9. University of Copenhagen
10. National University of Singapore

Crypto education is getting more mainstream and these universities are changing the industry as we know it. Cornell, as the leading university, offers 14 classes on cryptocurrency and/or blockchain (up from 9 in 2018) and its IC3 group brings together researchers from top universities around the world. Stanford, which is fourth on this list, is a crypto education university which had the largest number of courses on crypto and blockchain (even 10) in 2018, followed by Cornell (9) and the University of Pennsylvania (6). In 2019, the numbers show that Stanford was offering 8 courses and the University of Pennsylvania offered 2 courses. Meanwhile, the focus on our Bitcoin and altcoin news shows that the student interest is also growing. Crypto and blockchain are looking like topics which students start liking very much - even 34% of them expressed interest in taking a course compared to 28% in 2018 as per the report.

Norwegian Airlines is the low-cost air carrier that is headquartered in Oslo, Norway and is the new major airline that bets on cryptocurrency payments to increase its profit. As the latest news show, Norwegian allows customers to pay for air tickets using cryptocurrency now and hopes that it will help improve results of the company. An interview with the CEO of the crypto exchange Norwegian Block Exchange (NBX) in the crypto news today suggests this. As per the interview which is published by the local business newspaper DN, the NBX boss Stig Kjos-Mathisen said that “everything is ready from our side" and that the major airline is now prepared for the long-awaited implementation of ticket purchases with crypto. The communications director at Norwegian, Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen, was a bit more hesitant to offer specifics and only said that the team is "working on a solution, but we don’t have anything concrete to report about a launch.” The implementation of a crypto payment solution is seen as a new attempt which can help the airline further cut costs and improve its profitability, preventing the financial difficulties of becoming higher. Ever since the father and founder of the airline Bjorn Kjos stepped down as CEO, the major airline has been in trouble in terms of financials. Meanwhile, the NBX CEO further explained that airlines right now pay 1.5% to 2.5% of the ticket price as a fee to credit card companies and that this cost is carried by the consumer. Meanwhile, tickets are bought 30 to 60 days before a trip is made but due to credit card companies that withhold the payments until the time of the departure, the major airline is forced to arrange costly financing from other sources in the meantime.

“Both of these costs will disappear with the implementation of crypto payments,” Kjos-Mathisen said, expressing some optimism on the potential for the payment solution. “If this ends up being cheaper for merchants, and easier and faster for consumers, it can get big. It’s impossible to say how big, but we will be a serious actor who is early in the game."

NBX now supports trading in BTC/USDC, ETH/USDC, ETH/BTC as well as fiat trading in Bitcoin/Norwegian kroner. It is regulated by the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority.

The Bitcoin price news today show that the 'lighting Bitcoin' is still below $9,700 but is safely fighting off the $9,600 levels for one more time. On February 20, the price of the most dominant coin dropped by around 9% which was seen as a move that caught investors off guard. However, the BTC price fights the $9,600 level and does not let bears pull it beneath it. Before this, we saw Bitcoin trading at $10,200 and in that range. However, the situation backfired and the most dominant coin reversed. At the time, the ARK Invest analyst Yassine Elmandjra tweeted that the $1,000 price drop was the fifth largest correction to occur on the timeframe since 2017. https://twitter.com/yassineark/status/1230267176747229188?s=12 Ever since the sharp downside move, BTC price fights multiple levels. What is interesting is that everyone is trying to pinpoint the main source of the flash crash and a lot of analysts came with theories. The lighting Bitcoin which was seen above $10,200 is not here anymore and many are trying to locate the reason for that. A handful of theories have arisen in that manner and some attributed the drop in the cryptonews and the volatility now to the consecutive unplanned Binance exchange outages which halted trading on the platform and prevented traders from being able to log into their accounts. Other analysts like filbfilb said that there is a shortage of Tether (USDT) at Binance which contributed to the current market conditions. In his Telegram-based channel, the analyst noted that this USDT shortage possibly shows that the majority of traders were in long positions, an observation which was supported by the decreasing pace of Bitcoin's momentum and the liquidation of $120 million leveraged longs at BitMEX. Regardless of the reasons for this, we can see how BTC price fights off new levels every day. The drop to $9,346 certainly shook a lot of investors from their Bitcoin and altcoin positions and the current state of the market is negatively impacting the investors' bullish sentiment. Still, many are choosing to wait and see how the situation will unfold and if there will be a clear signal that a bottom has been reached. At press time, the price of Bitcoin is at $9,667 with a 1% increase on the day.

If you have logged in today to see news on the topic of regulation crypto exchange and how countries are regulating crypto, this news story is quite connected and similar. As reports show, the major investment bank and financial giant Morgan Stanley is buying the online trading firm E*Trade Financial Group which would extend the bank's offerings to everyday investors. This $13 billion deal marks the largest takeover for Morgan Stanley since the crisis of 2008 which is why it is noteworthy in our cryptocurrency news. The purchase will also see the major investment bank get the 5+ million clients that E*Trade currently has as well as the $360 billion in assets and an online bank. As the Wall Street Journal reported on February 20, the financial giant Morgan Stanley will receive over 4,000 corporate customers as well as $580 billion of stock held on behalf of their employees. At the same time, the CEO of the company Michael Pizzi will retain its position and the company will keep its brand, retail storefronts as well as ad campaigns. In April 2019, E*Trade announced its official plan to begin offering digital currency trading on its platform, when it was related to the regulation crypto exchange news stories. At the time, the company was ready to offer Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) after which it would also add other cryptocurrencies. As for the financial giant Morgan Stanley, they were in the Bitcoin news for trying to launch swaps tracking BTC futures since early fall in 2018 but did not receive a single contract by the end of that year. Nonetheless, the firm is ready to launch cryptocurrency services as soon as there is any sign of demand, according to sources familiar with the matter. The Wall Street giant postponed its plans to enter the crypto industry more actively as the value of cryptocurrencies fell at the end of 2018. One of their most recent attempts was the launch of Phemex, a new cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform in Singapore. The developers claim that this platform is ten times faster than the traditional crypto trading platforms - and offering 100x leverage to both retail and institutional investors in BTC, ETH and XRP.