Autor Cointelegraph By Ciaran Lyons

“Any kid who doesn’t learn something about Bitcoin is missing out,” says Bitcoin advocate Ben De Waal.

De Waal explains that his 12-year-old daughter Samantha has already convinced “a couple” of her schoolmates and a teacher to hop on the Bitcoin bandwagon, though she’s not attempting to “orange pill the entire school”… yet.

Ben De Waal. (Supplied)

Thanks to her upbringing in a “Bitcoin family” that has largely abandoned fiat currency, Sam is now a Bitcoin ambassador wunderkind nicknamed The Bitcoin Kid.

De Waal himself discovered Bitcoin “around 2010” and dedicated his life to it around 2016 (sadly, after he deleted 200 Bitcoin!). He’s worked in engineering leadership positions at both Swan Bitcoin and Lightning Labs and explains he first introduced Sam to children’s books about Bitcoin when she was just 10 years old.

Just two years after she read her first Bitcoin book, Sam found herself on the grand stage of BTC Prague 2023 in mid-June, delivering a speech about Bitcoin.

Oh, and she had to follow MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor’s presentation, too.

Seems like she nailed it, though – she was “the best” speaker at the conference according to Peter McCormack, the host of the incredibly popular podcast What Bitcoin Did.

It’s her second big conference appearance, following a presentation at Adopting Bitcoin in 2022. 

Adults shouldn’t feel too bad, though — kids have a natural advantage when it comes to understanding and learning about Bitcoin.

Scott Sibley, co-author of the children’s book Goodnight Bitcoin, believes this is because kids haven’t really latched onto a specific form of currency yet.

“In many ways, it’s easier for kids to learn about Bitcoin because they don’t have the baggage of thinking it’s new or different.”

Goodnight Bitcoin is an origin tale recounting how Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin and sent the first Bitcoin to Hal Finney.

“Goodnight Bitcoin tells the story of Satoshi and Hal as they attempt to create the impossible: a new money called Bitcoin,” Sibley says.