Someone Wants To Give Kids A Cryptocurrency Piggybank

Giving children a piggybank is one of the oldest methods of teaching them to be financially responsible and imparting the concept of saving money for a rainy day. However, with technology marching every onward, someone thought it was a good idea to replace physical piggybanks with a virtual one and use cryptocurrency instead of real-world currency to give to kids.

The crypto piggybank is a product of the startup “Pigzbe,” which also has the same name. It’s the brainchild of Filippo Yacob, who was actually on Forbes’ 30-under-30 list a while back. As to what it does, the company published a whitepaper explaining that it basically allows parents to teach children about how finance works in the 21st century.

“Financial literacy will be an important 21st-century skill, and finding ways to introduce earning, saving and managing money principles at a young age will help children begin to develop these necessary skills,” the whitepaper reads.

“Pigzbe is a part physical and part digital piggy-wallet for children aged 6 and up, powered by Wollo, your child’s first cryptocurrency. Think of Pigzbe as a friendly, tangible financial assistant that will teach children the principles of modern money in an exciting and safe system that harnesses children's natural drive to learn through self-correcting, practical experimentation.”

The arrangement would essentially involve using Blockchain to help impart a sense of financial responsibility in children through a rewards system when using the technology. As Futurism notes, this is the kind of thing that would have given George Orwell nightmares.

There’s also the question of the value of the Wollo coins themselves, which are quite new. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, they have yet to take off, and it seems a significant chunk of the profits are going to the owners of the cryptocurrency. At this point, there’s no guarantee that it will actually go anywhere.