The financial world is ever-changing, with one of the biggest changes over the last decade being the emergence of cryptocurrency. As it’s had such a big impact, young people must learn about what it is, the benefits, the drawbacks, potential scams, and whether or not it’s a worthwhile investment.
The more that young people know, the smarter investments they will make as they grow up, and with more currencies likely to emerge in the digital world, getting in the know early on is key. Also, in the age of TikTok, there are plenty of people flaunting a luxury lifestyle and spreading false information to get people to invest with them, so informing young people of the truth is key. So, we’re going to cover a few ways you can educate young people on cryptocurrencies!
Choose The Right Learning Resources
There are plenty of great learning resources out there for young people, so it’s important you choose the right ones and steer them away from learning everything through social media, where people often claim to know a lot more than they really do. Websites like Coinbase Learn and Binance Academy have good learning platforms that are accessible, there are books like “Mastering Bitcoin” if they’re more of a text-based learner, or of course, there are plenty of YouTube videos that help to give a good overview and understanding of topics. Rather than just telling young people to find their own resources, find a few examples to point them in the right direction to ensure that they are finding information from reliable sources.
Online Security
A vital part of teaching young people about cryptocurrency will be the online security element. The world of cryptocurrency is rife with scams, with many people, even experienced traders, needing to utilise crypto recovery services to help get their money back. Here are a few of the common ones you need to make sure that you mention:
- Celebrity impersonation: Deep faking can be used to create videos that look like well-known celebrities are endorsing particular investments or brokers when really they never did.
- Broker scams: people approach investors claiming they have quick wins to help them make more money. They will either ask for a small upfront payment, give them the return, build trust, and encourage them to invest more. Or, they will simply take the initial payment and then you’ll never hear from them again.
- Pump and dump schemes: a group of people will buy into a specific cryptocurrency at once to inflate the value, get other people to invest, and then pull the investments, so they make a lot of money and leave everyone else with a worthless investment.
- Romance scams: long slow forms of manipulation can be used where fraudsters cultivate relationships with people to encourage them to invest. Common signs are not wanting to meet in person, not wanting to FaceTime, asking for money, or using vague or not many images on whatever the platform is.
Considering taking them through cybersecurity courses focused on scams will be really valuable, in terms of investing and protecting their money in general.
Focus On Responsible Investing
It’s important that throughout your discussions of cryptocurrency, you focus on teaching them about responsible investing. Discussing the element of risk and how volatile digital currencies can be is so key, helping them to understand that even if they read somewhere that something is a guaranteed investment, you should never invest more than you can afford to lose and that you should always do your own due diligence before making an investment. Show them the importance of diversifying and having investments in different areas, with encouragement on long-term perspectives. The younger generation is constantly shown videos about getting rich quickly and rushing to the end when it comes to financial goals, so shifting their perspective towards more responsible investing is really important.
Show Them Real Life Examples
A good way for young people to visualise how cryptocurrency can work and function is to show them real-life examples. Showing them the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to cryptocurrency can help them understand how everything works in more detail. Something important to show them examples of is how quickly cryptocurrencies can lose their value, with some scary statistics about how much money people have lost, to help them make better and more sensible investments if/when they do start trading digital currencies.
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re a teacher or a parent, teaching young people about the pros and cons of cryptocurrencies will help them be aware of how the digital currency landscape works, to make good investments in the future. Adjusting our views of education and what we should be teaching young people is important when things like finance are changing so quickly and exponentially.
