I'm not impressed by my post/day average I must say, I guess I'm a classical lurker 
I'm better at lurking
Back in 2011, when FPGAs started to be developed on, I proposed to my professor to design a Bitcoin ASIC as my master thesis. It wouldn't have taken a lot of time. Less than butterfly labs, at least! But he refused, saying that digital-only circuits are a solved problem and have no academic value. Which is true actually, if you are a IC-design academic
He agreed it would be interesting for economists, however.