I was recently hired by the Haida Gwaii Rec Society as a specialist instructor, and I gave my first instruction in Port Clements. The age range of the kids was 4–12 and the group was 11 altogether.
Well it all started out one Wednesday morning, another nice sunny day in Haida Gwaii. At first I realized that there was potentially no chance kids would understand or even find Bitcoin interesting. Given the experiences I’ve had trying to introduce Bitcoin to adults, I naively thought I would have similar experiences with children.
However, to my pleasant surprise, I received not only different reactions, but altogether complete interest and even enthusiasm. For me this was quite startling, perhaps from my lack of real experience educating children, but more likely from the dulling effects of stubbornness I had encountered from some of the grown-ups of this world.
I had planned a few things for the kids, starting with the telephone game to demonstrate the unreliability of humans to communicate consistent messages to a scavenger hunt that would force the kids to trade for all the necessary supplies to create some artwork, artwork that is now for sale on OpenBazaar. In the morning I made some faux bitcoins with paper cut-outs and pennies (a unit of currency no longer produced in Canada due to its almost 2.5x production to value cost) with the purpose of facility some real-world exchange of “bitcoins.”
For the most part the telephone game descended into chaos but they were able to relay one message on the last attempt: “bitcoins are crazy.” In the scavenger hunt they had to run around the gym to find one of paint brushes, paper, paint, painting trays, and crayons. All the kids had 4 bitcoins at this point and then proceeded to trade their bitcoins for the supplies they needed to start painting. This part in particular was cool for me because it showed how simply trade could occur, even among children, irregardless of what they used for trade, it happened so smoothly. This leads me to believe that the barriers to trade that exist today are at least in some part completely artificial.
I didn’t even have to instruct the kids to theme their paintings on bitcoin because I never even got the chance. As soon as they had sorted out the supplies they were on their way. I was really hoping to implant the idea of Bitcoin and they would just set off with their imagination, and so they did.
Here are some of the highlights:
I asked the kids to name their pieces, so all these titles are original. I also asked a few of them what they thought about Bitcoin. Some quotes: “Bitcoins very awesome”, “It’s good money”, “Cool”, “It has lots of colors.”
Once the kids finished their artwork, I helped them each create their own listing on OpenBazaar in my store. For anyone not familiar with Open Bazaar, I would encourage you to take a look and even open a store, even if you don’t know what to sell, just open one and it will come to you.
The kids were fascinated with OpenBazaar, and I could really see their eyes light up when they found out they could sell anything on there, and sell it to the whole world, for free, and for bitcoins!!! I told the kids that we would donate any bitcoins from the sales to OpenBazaar, and they seemed to love that, even going so far as to ask if it would help other kids “who didn’t have enough” and I think in the ripple it will.
For me the most fascinating and amazing part of this experience was the shear enthusiasm the kids showed towards the concepts of Bitcoin and OpenBazaar, and more importantly, how open they were to it all. It really inspires me to know that even young kids find Bitcoin interesting and “cool” because that shows me that our future is friendly. Confucius says: “If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.”
The nature of open systems like Bitcoin and OpenBazaar ultimately reveal the true nature of people, how we want to connect, help each other, trade with each other, and to walk each other home.
You can find all the artwork from the kids on my OB store by searching my onename handle @therealninza. Any proceeds will be donated back to OB to support them going forward so that this kind of thing can continue to happen.
Feel free to send me any questions or comments, I would love some feedback for future endeavors.
The coin is strong.
