Sundar Pichai’s 11-Year-Old Son Forays Into Ethereum (ETH) Mining

When crypto enthusiasts discuss adoption, bigwig institutions, household names, and the titles of prominent executives are often thrown around. So, it should come as no surprise that the cryptocurrency community was rattled when Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, unexpectedly divulged that his son had forayed into the crypto sector, through Ethereum (ETH) to be precise.

Speaking at the New York Times DealBook event, which was also attended by BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Pichai was asked about his opinion regarding technology attachment/addiction and managing screen-on time for children. Relating to query to his personal life, the prominent technology entrepreneur, who is reportedly has a net worth of $650 million, first noted that he “is like every other parent” today, potentially alluding to the growing presence of screens in western homes.

Although this adds up, especially considering that Pichai is fully engrossed in the technology world, the Google CEO then revealed something unexpected, telling the audience that his 11-year-old son has dabbled in cryptocurrencies and their rapidly growing ecosystem.

Per Pichai, during one of his family’s dinner outings, the Google executive began discussing Bitcoin in an unexplained context. Interestingly, after speaking on the subject matter, his son interrupted Pichai, telling the technology savant, his father, that he misappropriated Bitcoin and was actually talking about Ethereum.

Pichai’s son then added that he’s mining it, using the household’s only computer, not an ASIC or computer server, no less. Interestingly, considering the way Pichai revealed this fact, his son’s Ether mining might have been going on right under the nose of a technology giant’s chief executive, ironically enough.

Interestingly, Pichai isn’t the only member of Google’s top brass that has had his/her son/daughter foray into the nascent world of crypto assets and blockchain technologies.

As reported by Ethereum World News in early-July, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google himself, revealed that his 10-year-old son had mined Ether, which Brin seems to be a fan of. Unlike Pichai, however, Brin noted that his son’s crypto mining experience was a collaborative effort between the household patriarch and the youngun.

Speaking on the matter, Brin originally stated:

A year or two ago, my son insisted that we needed to get a gaming PC… I told him, ‘Okay, if we get a gaming PC, we have to mine cryptocurrency.’ So we set up an Ethereum (ETH) miner on there.”

“He Understood Ethereum Better Than How Fiat Works”

Interestingly, the prominent executive closed off his time speaking on cryptocurrencies by noting that he had to “explain to his crypto-minded son” how government-issued currencies and the traditional financial system “actually works.” Noting that it was a “good conversation,’ Pichai pointed out that his son actually understood Ethereum better than how fiat operates, which may not be a surprise considering the migration from paper to digital.

Title Image Courtesy of Agnieszka Boeske on Unsplash