Kids and Blockchain

Yesterday, on march 30, 2019 in Tashkent there was an unusual training on blockchain and crypto currencies for kids from 12 to 15 y.o. Why unusual? Because usually it's the students who lag following the lecturer, but in this case the lecturer was trying to catch up with the students.

That lecturer was me. And before I started telling how to install a wallet, students were already downloading it from the Google Play market. While I was showing them around the wallet's UI, they were already filling it in with bitcoin from a faucet. They were running one step ahead of me. I even had to ask them twice "Am I speaking too slow for you?"

The training lasted for 2 hours almost without breaks. In one hour I had to stand them up and push them to exercise. The brains were on fire, but they demanded that I continue answering their questions, telling the crypto story without any silly breaks.

They knew nothing at start. I was surprised that they have not even heard of Satoshi Nakamoto. But by the end of the training each of them had a bank in their pocket, knew how to handle private keys and had their public key close and ready to show to their potential clients and receive a bitcoin payment.

Each of them installed a bitcoin.com wallet. The one who did it first, got $1 in bitcoin as a reward. But most importantly the guy now had his own point of sale system that he could use over the Internet. He could use it for his Instagram store to sell t-shirts and receive money not into his dad's account, but into his own wallet. Nobody can say now that he is too young for online commerce and for having his own money.

The $1 transfer was almost instant. While we where busy with it, his mates were exploring the new toy - wallet app. One of them got excited in a snap when he found a built-in online store with hoodies that he could buy with bitcoin. He loudly and proudly stated - "This is real money! I can buy real stuff with it!".

His friend was pointing me at a page with mining pool calculator asking - "Can I really get money every day by running some kind of software on my computer? Do I get paid for calculating something?". I could barely stop him from searching for mining apps for android on the market, promising that mining with a smartphone is a bad idea. And that mining at home with his desktop computer is more of an learning exercise, not a real business.

The group grasped the mining business idea on the fly and in a minute they were staring at bitcoin price charts, trying to solve this new puzzle. You should have seen their eyes, when they learned that during the recent bitcoin boom in 2017 $100 dollar investment into bitcoin turned into $2000 and into $10000 for ethereum. Even after the crypto winter, that $100 would be $400 and $1000 today. I had to cool them down and explain that being a trader is like being a professional soccer player. Anyone can try and play the game. But only the most determined after many months of constant practice can become professional and constantly profitable. Unlike sports in trading you need ample range of knowledge and skills. You need to understand economics, politics, learn the math, probabilities, have strong discipline and control over your emotions, knowledge of fundamental and technical analysis. You need coding skills to create trading bots and tools that are becoming must have in crypto trading. It's like become an astronaut. But as a result, the reward is huge. You can make as much money as you need and keep making it until you just stop caring about money at all. I warned them that it's not for everyone. But just like I had it 20 years ago, I saw in my student's eyes the insight that study can actually be very rewarding financially.

Another student got very excited about building mining farms. "I can assembly a computer of any complexity" - stated he proudly. "Is it worth mining crypto today?" - he asked me in a hopeful voice. In response I told him a story, how in 2015 I asked a friend of mine the same question - "Is it worth it?". And he said "No", but kept running around looking for new video cards and mining on his office computer at nights. "You know what, I don't blame him anymore. It was my choice not to research it and try it myself. In fact, it's still just a beginning. This technology and this money is younger than you are. This is your money. Money of your generation. Blockchain is your generation's database. You will keep everything that is of value and importance on one blockchain or another. It's young and it's going to open you opportunities that my generation did not have in our time".

So, do our kids need blockchain and crypto? Should we tell them about it and allow them to use it? Well, it depends on who you want to be for your kids - someone like my friend, being a naysayer or someone like Vitalik Buterin's dad. A dad who opened a road to success to his son.

Open the future to your kids and shut those friends who don't believe in the genius of our children...