Even PayPal has accepted cryptocurrency as a mode of payment. This surely means that the onslaught of cryptocurrency is underway and that crypto will grow increasingly mainstream in the foreseeable future. This is one reason why I want to devote part of my portfolio towards crypto - so that I can guide my son in this BRAVE new world and help him navigate these uncharted waters. The following details my battle plan to teach my son about Bitcoin and ease him into this world.
Using Sight
In my day job, I work as a teacher. One thing's for sure: children have not reached the cognitive maturity to visualize and understand abstract concepts. Some of my students already have enough problems counting the number of dollar notes and coins they have in their wallets, so getting them to understand the idea of digital assets is kinda a tall order. Hence, I need to leverage visual aids when I explain Bitcoin to my son. I will use a pizza actually since there's this story of Laszlo Hanyecz paying for two pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoins way back in 2010.
I will explain that the pizza represents one Bitcoin and then proceed to cut the pizza into many slices so that I can illustrate the fact that Bitcoin can be divided into fractions also known as Satoshis. This is one major difference between Bitcoin and fiat currency, so I hope my son will not be confused about how he can grow wealthy even if he owns minute pieces of Bitcoin. When he reaches the fourth grade and is introduced to decimals, I will level up his knowledge by dividing the pizza into as many pieces as possible so that it will be divided down to many decimal places.
Using Touch
Bitcoin is a digital asset, so I can't let my son have a hands-on experience with it. Therefore, the next best thing I can do is to bring him to one of the 10 ATM machines in my country. I can show him how to buy Bitcoin by using my cash or credit card. I'm sure his eyes will widen the first few times as he witnesses my dollar notes disappearing into the machine slot, only to have the amount of Bitcoin transacted appearing on the screen. Likewise, I will bring him to merchant stores that accept payments in crypto. For instance, there is a food court operator called Kopitiam that empowers customers to pay for their food using Bitcoin. So, I hope this will let him understand that in some ways, paying through Bitcoin is just like paying via a mobile payment app. This will help him understand how Bitcoin can be used to buy things.
Using Hearing
Our trusty exchange, KuCoin, makes an intoxicating ka-ching sound effect whenever I trade AMPL tokens for ETH. Hence, I intend to sit my boy beside me when I use this platform so that he will learn to associate the sound with the fact that buying and selling of Bitcoin happens online. I might even come up with a chant: "Coins jingle in my pocket, Bitcoin ka-ching on my laptop!"
How are you helping your child(ren) assimilate into the world of cryptocurrencies?
Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels
