Back in 2018, a group of students and advisers from various universities created Student Coin, a blockchain framework designed with the goal of teaching college students how crypto works.
After languishing in obscurity, their subreddit saw a spike of new membership during their initial coin offering (ICO), landing it on the list of the 50 fastest-growing communities this month, according to Subreddit Stats.
Student Coin makes it possible for students and colleges to create their own tokens, trade crypto, and even issue loans via cryptocurrency.
Now, they aim to be the future of education financing, and with support from players like Harvard University and the London School of Economics, as well as $21m in new funding, this team may just pull it off.
This points to opportunities in a few key areas:
One request: If we’re going to rebuild the student loan industry, can we puh-LEASE do a better job educating students on what it really means to borrow?
Did we just sneak another Suez Canal meme in here? That’s 2 weeks in a row!
The deep forest-green color known as “viridian” is the latest craze to explode on Pinterest.
Searches for “viridian aesthetic” sprouted back in February, and are growing like a weed on Google too, according to Keywords Everywhere.
You can also make some green of your own by combining this insight with one of our past Signals to help people bring this look into their own space:
There’s also an opportunity to capitalize on these aesthetic trends by making wallpapers for computers or smartphones. You could sell them (NFTs, anyone?), but the bigger play might be to use them as marketing for another product you sell.
The Swiss design firm QWSTION has designed a new performance fabric called Bananatex, made from abaca plants, a cousin of the banana tree.
The beauty of Bananatex is that it’s super strong and waterproof, making it perfect for clothes, shoes, and outdoor gear. It’s also completely biodegradable, and requires no pesticides or fertilizers to produce.
While Bananatex hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, we see lots of opportunity for forward-thinking sustainable brands to create products using the fabric (similar to the fashion opportunities in our Mushroom Signal). According to Keywords Everywhere, people already search for:
The last major development in waterproof fabrics -- Gore-Tex -- was invented in 1976 and has enjoyed a strong market position ever since. But Gore-Tex is made from DuPont’s Teflon, which is bad news for the environment.
With consumer demand for sustainable goods skyrocketing, it may not be long before Gore-Tex is Gore-Toast.
H&M just did one of the first major collaborations with Bananatex, paving the way for that banana breaddd. Who’s next?