The Idea
How to teach my kids about bitcoin is something that I'm constantly thinking about. There is this cool project called lightning piggy which I'd like to use when they've had more interaction with the digital world. Before they get there I'd like to use something more physical. Something that they can hold and touch, as well as get familiar with some of the key aspects like saving and security.
The Representation
So I thought I'd have a go at stamping out some steel washers with a value in sats. I already had all the material (anvil, hammer, stamps, steel washers and stamps with individual characters) from experimenting with stamping out seed phrases. I used different sized washers as IOU tokens for different amounts of sats. They can be returned for their fiat value or used to buy something from the bank of mum and dad.
For now I've made:
- 13x 10 sat tokens
- 11x 20 sat tokens
- 14x 50 sat tokens
- 22x 100 sat tokens
- 18x 1k sat tokens
- 2x 10k sat tokens
So the total amount for now will be around about 50k sats.
It took me a couple of hours stamping them out. I was going to put some identifiers on each washer to make sure the supply doesn't inflate, but that would have been a lot more trouble. I think that by the time the kids are old enough to start trying to print their own coins (maybe 8-10?), I will replace these physical tokens for the actual sats.
One thing I wanted to do was to paint them orange, but as you can see it didn't turn out as I'd have hoped.
I did see online that they make copper washers which I think would look a lot better, but I'm too tight to buy them just for this experiment. I used what I already had and stacked more sats because of it (the real ones!). These are after all just an IOU. It should only really be for a parent to children educational tool. One other thing that I think would have been cool is to use this specific Bitcoin logo stamp from https://www.seedor.io/en-int/products/bitcoin-schlagstempel-5er-set
How To Use Them
My kids are both under 5 so now I need to think more about when I should hand out these tokens. Maybe as pocket money, or for completing a difficult task. I know should probably start small or else once again become bitrupt (as in a no coiner again).
One thing I'd like them to learn is delayed gratification. Perhaps having two piggy banks might help for this. One is for spending any time you like, but the savings one can only be spent after one year or some longer period of time. A year might be too long for young children, so maybe a shorter period. It basically just needs to show that it was worth holding it longer than to spend it right away.
One drawback I can see happening is that at the moment, 10 sats isn't worth much in it's fiat value. They will likely be asking something like "How many candy bars can I buy with 100 sats?" At the moment in Australia the answer is ZERO, which probably won't go down very well. If given the choice they might take the fiat coin over the sats.
Another issue might be understanding that this is an IOU from the parents. It is not part of the Bitcoin network, but when the time comes to go digital they will at least have some understanding that it is valuable and worth holding onto.
Thoughts
This is currently a work in progress. I want to look around for different types of piggy banks. Maybe the savings one you'll need to smash open, and the spending one should be easy to get at. Also thinking whether they should be mixed up with other fiat coins. And when they're old enough, I'll get them to hide it somewhere secure and not tell anyone about it. At least to get those ideas going when they're young, so they know what they need to do when they're adults.
Interested to hear your opinions or any other ideas you have.