At a Los Angeles summer camp this week, the children enjoyed a petting zoo, drank from juice boxes during snack time and played a game that involved t

At a summer camp, juice boxes and bitcoin mining

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2021-06-29 06:30:05

At a Los Angeles summer camp this week, the children enjoyed a petting zoo, drank from juice boxes during snack time and played a game that involved tossing dozens of balls on top of a parachute.

In a sign of the bubbling enthusiasm for digital currencies, the Crypto Kids Camp began Monday in a warehouse in a busy port district. Over five days, the camp combines activities that would be common at any summer camp with a crash course in how to think about, buy and even mine bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

This week, 26 kids ages 5 to 17 participated, on the idea that no one is too young to join the bitcoin economy. Most were non-white, as part of an intentional push by the organizers.

“Most of us grew up in school and nobody ever taught us how money worked,” said camp founder Najah Roberts, who is Black and started the camp as one way to try to close the racial wealth gap. “Therefore, we really missed the significance of savings and investing and how these things came about.”

The camp is part of a trend toward young adults and even children becoming immersed in cryptocurrency through online trading exchanges, school clubs, social media and other outlets. In Georgia, state lawmakers this year considered a bill to require high school students to take a course on personal finance including cryptocurrency.