Renaissance Dad: Bitcoins and Beanie Babies
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A while back, Gulfport gained notoriety for being the home of the first home sale to be conducted via cryptocurrency. As I sit down to write this, I have watched several short videos aimed at helping my young children understand “crypto.” I’d like to say it’s part of the homeschool curriculum, but unfortunately it’s because I’ve read dozens and dozens of articles explaining bitcoin and I still don’t understand it. I only have a degree in economics, so it’s understandable that this might be difficult for me.
Oh, I get that it’s decentralized money. And I know there are warehouses full of computers in rural America that “mine” bitcoin by “solving math problems” and using so much electricity that lakes boil. (What the computers do cannot be explained in English.) I understand that it is completely anonymous, impossible to steal, and apparently quite easy to lose. There was a guy in Scotland who threw out an old laptop, forgetting that he had once mined some then-worthless bitcoin – today worth around $150 million. Now he’s literally trying to get the municipality to let him mine the dump for his lost bitcoin. Pretty sure I can’t get a penny for solving the daily Wordle.
I’ve had long conversations with a local cryptocurrency guru where we both leave frustrated. He says people agree that bitcoin has value, and it does Why it has value. I said, “That sounds like Beanie Babies,” hearing back in the day when specific stuffed toys were supposedly in demand and more valuable. He admitted: “Yeah, it’s like Beanie Babies, but it’s not going to go away.”
And just as soon as I accepted the fact that my kids have to handle my bitcoin investments for me, the Crypto geeks started talking about NFTs. I went to an article explaining NFTs for beginners and it said, “Non-fungible tokens are digital assets that contain identifying information recorded in smart contracts.”
Oh! Why didn’t you say that? Digital Assets! Smart contracts! It’s like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and we’re all just nodding our heads at this. Except people get rich and poor – and then rich and poor again – and I miss the roller coaster.
As I understand it, NFTs are a digital way of assigning ownership of an asset – usually, but not always, digitally. Like, I could send you a PDF of this edition of The Gabber with an NFT and you’d have the “original” digital edition – as original as the Mona Lisa. All other PDFs of The Gabber will be as posters from the Louvre Museum gift shop.
Why am I even writing about this? I can say that as a parent it is important for us to teach our children financial literacy. But I hate that the only way to get bitcoin (other than buying it like a stupid investor) is to have giant computers solving complicated math problems. I’ve written about plants and people have emailed me and offered me plants. I’ve written stories about peanuts, and readers have offered me peanuts. I have written about brick pavers, and yes, I have received offers for pavers. So now I’m relying on the computing power of my fingers and laptop for someone to hand me some sweet bitcoin (sure, it’s worth $21,000, but it can’t last).
I promise not to lose it.
Abby Baker
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