Cryptocurrency piggy-bank designed for children

A new startup is reinventing the piggy-bank with a cryptocurrency designed to help teach children the value of money

Springwise has covered a number of cryptocurrency innovations, including a way to mine cryptocurrency as you heat your home and a retail mall that only accepts cryptocurrency. Just when it seems that we have reached peak crypto comes a new innovation – a cryptocurrency aimed at children. Startup Pigzbe offers a “family-friendly” cryptocurrency that allows children as young as six to start collecting their own tokens. The company pairs a hardware “piggy-wallet” with an app that turns gifting and saving into a game. But perhaps the most important innovation is to reduce transfer fees for family members to as little as 1p, making them up to 1,000 times cheaper and faster than competitors like Go-Henry.

Pigzbe is powered by it’s own cryptocurrency, called Wollo, with transfer fees low enough for parents to transfer small amounts to reward chores or give pocket money. The piggy-wallet is a cold storage device for the currency and also works as a gaming device with the app. It controls an immersive, in-app game that helps teach children the value of money. The product is completely borderless, allowing far-flung families to create their own micro-financing networks. Pigzbe is also launching a payments card connected to the app. The card will enable families to spend their Wollo in multiple currencies.

Pigzbe was founded by Forbes 30-Under-30 entrepreneur Filippo Yacob, and Jon Marshall, designer of the Kano Computer. According to the companies’ own Whitepaper, its goal is “to teach children the principles of 21st century finance while enabling families as micro-financing networks to operate globally.” Pigzbe will launch an ICO for Wollo in June 2018, with a cap of 675 million tokens. In theory, this means that the value of the money in children’s wallets will grow as the tokens become more valuable. It is important to educate children about money – but is six too young to risk their pocket money on the cryptocurrency roller-coaster?