The Rise and Fall of a High School Cryptocurrency
By Nathan
I had no plans at the beginning to become a cryptocurrency mogul. Nor did I aspire to be a failed crypto titan. It all started innocent enough.
During the lockdown of 2020, I was working from home in my two-bedroom country cottage with my four children and wife. I did say two bedrooms and four children in the same sentence. At the time, the oldest was in a wheelchair (broken femur) and the youngest was an infant. To say that this environment was not ideal for the intense concentration needed for grant writing in a pandemic would be an understatement.
I did what any rational person might do and purchased an Ender 3 3D printer. Ok, maybe that’s not what everyone would do. Or even a small and slightly crazy minority of people would do. But I got it and I loved it.
More importantly, my kids loved it. We suddenly owned a robot that could print toys. The action of 3d printing also has this mesmerizing quality that keeps children occupied for hours. I was sold.
An Accidental Teacher.
I told my buddy Andy about how much I was enjoying my new 3d printer. “The Alleluia School should have a class on 3d printing!”
“Great! When do you start?” If you don’t know Andy, it’s important to know that he’s the middle school principal at the school my community runs. He’s also my best friend. He was serious.
With all of two months of experience, I had more knowledge of 3d printing than any of the other teachers. I thought about it a little bit and said, “Do you think it’s actually a possibility?”
After a series of conversations, me with Shanelle (the queen of HR at the food bank), he with the headmaster and high school principal, we determined that it was indeed a possibility. I would start teaching two days a week during a study hall that coincided with my lunch hour.
For the 2020-21 school year, I had three students, and it took most of the first semester to get the printers. Still, I enjoyed myself and the kids did too. I now have way more respect for the amount of work that real teachers do behind the scenes. I didn’t do any of that, but at the very least it was better than sitting in a study hall doing nothing.
A class for creators.
Much to my surprise and delight, Andy said the school would have me back for a second year. Two of my three students came back, one graduated, and three new students joined. I took this to be very encouraging. I had realized during the previous year that just teaching the boys how to use a 3d printer simply wasn’t enough. As cool as it is, it’s still just a tool.
My idea for this school year was to try to combine 3d printing, programming, and electronics and do more of a maker/hacker class. At the beginning of the year, I told my students, “My goal for this class is that you learn to be creators, not just consumers.” Even though I’m a newbie at 3d printing and programming, I’ve been a maker for more than a decade. If you ever have a minute to sit and chat, ask me about leatherworking.
The school year started off pretty promising, especially after I introduced them to Microsoft MakeCode. “Don’t just play video games, learn to make them!” They thought this was an absolutely awesome idea. For the next couple months, they worked on making their very own video games using the block code editor.
If you’ve never heard the term “block code,” it’s a pretty ingenious way to teach kids programming. Instead of worrying about all of the syntax and strange punctuation that is the hallmark of most programming languages, block code uses digital puzzle pieces that say the actions you’re trying to accomplish. You still have to learn the way the logic of the program works, but it gives a layer of abstraction that makes it easier to comprehend.
This little piggy (doesn’t) go to market.
Then came the crypto conversation. Like most people who follow the tech world, my students are totally obsessed with the world of crypto. They love dogecoin and the idea of making millions of dollars out of thin air. Who wouldn’t?
Then I said it. “Enough talking about cryptocurrencies. Why don’t we just make our own?” Now I had their attention. I have one student that is more than normally precocious, and he was off like a rocket. This was the best idea ever. We dug into the research and found a way to make our own cryptotoken on the Solana blockchain. So, it technically wasn’t its own cryptocurrency, but that’s because our budget for technical development was the loose change I had left in my pocket after a trip to Chik fila.
I downloaded the suite of tools that I needed to mint our class token, which we dubbed “MakerCoin.” The day that I created the token and minted 100,000,000 MakerCoin (with approximately twelve lines typed into a command prompt) was a day of great rejoicing. Like putting a man on the moon kind of excitement.
Now the boys wanted to sell it. We spun up a WordPress website that you can still see at MakerCoin.net. They did 95% of the work on the website. My one command to them was that they had to tell the truth. They couldn’t lie and say that MakerCoin was anything more than a High School project. There’s this thing called fraud, and none of them would do well in prison.
We got the site up and ready for orders, but something in my conscience just wouldn’t stop bugging me. I needed more information. I called a good friend who’s a lawyer and told him what we were doing. When I got to the point of selling the cryptotoken, he said, “Whoah whoah WHOAH! You can’t sell a new cryptocurrency without securities license. This is serious business. Like go to jail kind of business.” I got off the phone, logged into the website, and shut down the shopping cart. MakerCoin was officially dead.
Failure isn’t an option. It’s mandatory.
One of my mantras for my students is that failure isn’t optional. It’s mandatory. If you’re not failing at something, you’re not trying hard enough. As a professional fundraiser, the more times I hear “No,” the more money I raise, because it means that I’m putting myself out there.
My students were pretty disappointed when I told them that I had to kill MakerCoin. One even suggested that I look into getting the necessary securities licenses in my spare time. But then I mentioned that we could always try to make and sell NFT’s.
NFT’s are the latest thing. It stands for “Non-Fungible Token.” They use the same technology as cryptocurrencies to mark a piece of digital media like a photograph, song, or video as “the original.” It’s a fairly ridiculous way of creating scarcity and value out of something that can be replicated until the cows come home at practically nothing. They aren’t a security that would require a securities license. They’re just a digital product that you can sell if you can happen to find a buyer.
That idea cleared the air immediately, especially when they started looking at how stupid most of the high flying NFT’s actually are. A room full of high school boys can easily come up with better ideas. And they might just learn something in the process.
If you want to hear more of my story, check out Demoniac, now available on Amazon.
