Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin payments will be converted into British pounds immediately upon receipt.
- The school said it may consider developing a Bitcoin asset reserve at a later stage, depending on crypto adoption
Lomond School, a private boarding and day school located in Helensburgh, Scotland, has announced it will begin accepting Bitcoin as a form of tuition payment starting in the autumn term of 2025. The school stated that this decision was made in response to direct inquiries from parents and guardians, both in the UK and abroad.
According to the announcement, Bitcoin payments will be converted into British pounds immediately upon receipt. The school clarified that this policy is intended to minimise exposure to price fluctuations in the crypto market. Lomond has no current plans to accept any other digital currencies, and there is no indication that it will hold Bitcoin on its balance sheet in the near term.
However, the school said it may consider developing a Bitcoin asset reserve at a later stage, depending on how widely crypto is adopted both domestically and globally. The school added that any such move would involve consultation with the broader Lomond community.
The school’s head teacher, Claire Chisholm, made the announcement at a cryptocurrency conference on Friday. She said the initiative is intended to accommodate “forward-thinking families around the world” who are already engaged with digital currencies. Lomond School, which charges £38,700 annually for full boarders, has a long history of attracting students from countries including China, Brazil, the UAE, Russia and Ukraine.
Lomond also stated that it has implemented anti-money laundering protocols in preparation for the introduction of Bitcoin payments. This comes amid a sharp increase in the use of cryptocurrencies in criminal activity in the UK. According to data released by Police Scotland, there has been a roughly 2,000% rise in crypto-related crime cases since 2019. Authorities have attributed this rise to organised crime groups increasingly using digital assets to obscure their operations.
The move by Lomond School is part of a broader trend of institutional interest in Bitcoin. In March 2025, former U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States would establish a strategic crypto reserve, with Bitcoin forming part of the holdings. In the education sector, a number of universities have taken steps to engage with Bitcoin both academically and financially.
The University of Wyoming established the Bitcoin Research Institute in July 2024 to support academic inquiry into blockchain technologies. Earlier this year, the University of Austin announced that it had allocated $5 million of its $200 million endowment fund to Bitcoin investments.
The University of Cincinnati introduced courses on Bitcoin and Web3 technologies in 2022, and El Salvador incorporated Bitcoin education into its national curriculum in 2023 through a partnership with the Mi Primer Bitcoin initiative.
