One of the hottest trending topics which fascinated my kid is crypto. Quite honestly, he felt that Dogecoin is the coolest currency and he even asked me to help him purchase some of it with his savings.

We’ve all heard of the term “Digital Natives” and I’m sure some of us here are “Digital Natives”. This refers to the generation that grew up with technology. Technology is here to stay, and I don’t think it’s going to a standstill. As many of us are still grappling with how this whole crypto and blockchain technology works, fueled with the whole speculation in the cryptocurrency market, this is definitely an area of fascination and fear.

While this is not an article explaining the technology, I wanted to approach this from the angle of exposing kids to technology and the other applications of this technology. There’s been too much hype around the speculation of cryptocurrencies which is just one part of the story.

Blockchain technology is something that will be here to stay. The benefits that the technology brings, especially with the ability to create a unique identity for digital assets, opens up endless possibilities for creators such as artists to “mint” original pieces which cannot be replicated.

While I feel that this technology is in its early days and will evolve to something more efficient, there is already wide adoption of blockchain technology in our lives today.

It really started with my 11-year-old boy, Isaac taking an interest in Dogecoin. He’s been reading it on Reddit a lot and is fascinated with the whole Elon Musk sending Dogecoin to the moon. While I’m glad he’s fascinated with how these things work, there is a lot of fluff in this whole proposition which I don’t entirely agree with. The other worrying thing is that he is starting to develop his values around investments and the value of money. Having him exposed to just a single facet of the technology would set that foundation wrong.

Having an interest in any given topic is priceless, and I didn’t want to let this slip. I did let him invest a small part of his savings in Dogecoin. $15 of it to be exact. That story was a good one. He was making over a dollar at one time, before losing about 40% of it on paper. Throughout the whole episode, I checked in with him on how he felt, and he was able to make a decision to hold on to it believing that it was still a good decision to invest. It did recover, and he sold everything making a handsome profit of 40 cents. He later kicked himself when it sent up further and he could have made a lot more. He’s now staying on the sideline and refusing to put any money into it, but I know he’s researching the next thing he should be investing in.

The thing about Blockchain, and Cryptocurrencies, it can get very energy hungry. To put it in context, Bitcoin uses more energy than Argentina and that puts the technology in the top 30 energy users worldwide according to a report by BBC.

Using blockchain technology, unique identities for digital assets such as artwork can be created and stored on the blockchain. This is referred to as NFT. This allows content creators to create their masterpieces without the issue of them being replicated. A good recent example of such an artwork changing hands is that of Mr. Vignesh Sundaresan (Metakovanby) purchasing artwork by digital artist Beeple at a Christie’s auction on March 11. He paid US69 mil for it, which was unthinkable even today.

Riding on the interest of my younger 7-year-old daughter’s in art, I suggested to the kids that we should create our own NFT Artwork and sell it online. This is a perfect example for us in how we can explore the technology together, create an art piece, and put it up for sale.

I also wanted them to think about the good that we can do along with the power to create. So, I asked them if they would give some of the proceeds away to a charity, and they immediately said “YES!”.

Out came the iPad, and we started drawing. It’s a simple illustration of a cute little Mochi. Yes, it’s very elementary, but it was fun creating it!

I did a quick search online, and realized that there aren’t any “NFT Mochi”, but I could be wrong. As far as research goes, this is actually the first NFT Mochi illustration that’s minted!

Together with the kids, we minted our first NFT and listed it for sale on Rarible (Click to view) and Opensea (Click to view).

I also took the opportunity to show them the cost of minting which essentially is the “gas” money that goes to processing the transaction on the Ethereum blockchain network. This fluctuates a lot and depending on the load and if you’re going to pay more to expedite the processing, it can range from a couple of tens of dollars to over a hundred dollars just to mint this NFT artwork.

This allowed me to explain to the kids how the technology works in kids language, and also how the energy impact the technology has.

We had a lot of fun in this process of being an NFT Artist. It was super cool, and I think we might do this again.

Our artwork, “World’s First NFT Mochi” is on sale, do check it out and if you are feeling the “work” that we’ve put in, do put in a bid to buy it! (That would be another story for me and my kids!)

Hope you’ve found this sharing useful. Do share your thoughts and comments with me.

Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://medium.com/the-joy-of-parenting/creating-nft-artwork-with-my-kids-e4a8ea8935ab?source=rss——-8—————–cryptocurrency