The camp will use a child-oriented book, Bitcoin Elementary. And the final project at the camp will be to create a non-fungible token, or NFT, a digital file like a work of art that is certified as unique using blockchain technology.
Square, a San Francisco-based digital payments company, has pledged to fund Jackson’s camp, he said, and is looking for more donations. His camp is aimed at children in grades 6 through 10 – an age at which they have already gained experience with online tokens through gaming platforms like Roblox, he said.
“You saw digital money. You understand. And you just have to put them on the right track and teach them what to do, ”he said.
“Parents should teach them to be accountable just like any other form of money, but I don’t think anyone should be prevented from owning Bitcoin,” he said.
Najah J. Roberts, founder of Crypto Blockchain Plug and Crypto Kids Camp in San Pedro, California.Maggie Shannon / for NBC News
Some of the kids attending cryptocurrency summer camps have been kicked off by their parents, said Maunda Land, a Florida consultant and investor who launched an online-only camp this week. Of the five students in her first camp, four had parents who owned digital currency, she said.
And since the students are minors, they may need their parents’ help to fund their digital wallet through a bank account or other payment method first, she said.
“Her homework was to get her wallet financed,” she said. But already, she added, “A couple of them had a little crypto that their parents bought for them.”
At the Los Angeles camp, the children showed how much they already knew. When Roberts asked them at the beginning of the camp if they could name some types of cryptocurrencies, they called out several, including Dogecoin and the Shiba Inu token.
She also spent time going through the history of the currency and explaining how its trade evolved over time from bartering animals to using clams as money to printing paper money backed by governments.
Ciris Hendricks, the camp’s chief operations officer, said they had planned more children to attend if it weren’t for the uncertainty about Covid-19 and local health regulations. Finally, they want to encourage public schools to introduce similar programs, not just in Los Angeles but across the country.
“We want to set it up so that it is in every city,” she said.
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