Both the announcement and the comments here focus on the amount in USD. When will (the majority of) that half-million USD be converted to BTC? (Via exchange? Via swap with an individual or entity holding a bunch of coins? Nice way to hedge liquidity if you've got the BTC.) What does it say that it isn't already done, and that it wasn't "each MIT student will receive 0.2 BTC" (or whatever a recent exchange would be for $100)?
There is probably more information available without having to contact those organizing it, and the article was written for media press-release ingestion, but I'm surprised to see no comments on these facets here (at the time of writing, and HN seems to be acting up a touch so I've been trying to submit for a bit after I wrote this).
My bet is that the vast majority of those funds has been in the form of BTC for a long time, and a large part has always been in the form of BTC.
Think about it: You're sitting on a large BTC mining fortune, and you've been watching the price of BTC slowly but surely decline over the last few months. What do you do?
Pooling your BTC with others to fund something like this in the hope that it will cause the price to go back up again in the longer term sounds like a really good investment if you're in this situation.
There is probably more information available without having to contact those organizing it, and the article was written for media press-release ingestion, but I'm surprised to see no comments on these facets here (at the time of writing, and HN seems to be acting up a touch so I've been trying to submit for a bit after I wrote this).