Encouraging Digital Spending and Saving with kidtoken

The landscape of our economy is changing. Digital payments, automatic withdrawals, and cryptocurrencies are hot topics these days. Cash and coins are less common in the marketplace than ever before, and our financial world is only going to become more digitized in the future.

In this evolving financial world, one of our main concerns is how to prepare the younger generation for newer currency methods, and acclimate them to digital funds in a way that is constructive, productive, and perhaps most importantly, fun! We think that we have found a way to incorporate all three of these with our new company, kidtoken.

Powered by OST, kidtoken is a tokenized allowance for kids. Blockchain based, kidtoken is designed to incentivize positive behaviors & create a modern digital way to save & spend that’s perfect for the new generation of kids.

Teaching children how to save and budget are fundamentals of parenthood, and there’s no better time to teach them financial responsibility than when they are in their formative years. We have been giving allowances to children for decades — but how often these days does it become a nuisance to have to remember to stop by the ATM or dig through your wallet or purse hoping that you have some spare cash on hand?

kidtoken is the allowance of the future. Through our site or app, parents can purchase unique crypto tokens and store them in a digital wallet, then transfer them directly to their child’s account on a recurring basis — eliminating the need for spare change and piggy banks. Even more exciting, kidtoken offers a way for parents to use digital currency to motivate their kids to reach goals and accomplish tasks. You can create personalized goals that are designed to best fit your child’s needs, whether you want to encourage your child to read more books, remember their manners, take care of pets, or improve their grades — the possibilities are endless.

The fun part for children comes not only with the sense of accomplishment and pride that comes from earning their own tokens, but being able to spend their digital funds on kidtoken’s in-site storefront. Toys and educational items are available for purchase so children can see the actual value of digitized currency. kidtoken offers parents an interactive platform that makes it enjoyable for kids to learn about earning, saving, and spending.

kidtoken in Classrooms

kidtoken has gained traction already with potential users, namely among the teaching community. One of our brand ambassadors, Benjamin Chambers, is a teacher who expressed some of his thoughts and excitement on how kidtoken can be used:

“kidtoken will be a very exciting addition to my classroom. Educators who have been teaching long enough know what works and what doesn’t. kidtoken is a no brainer. Promoting incentives for children to earn something with desired behaviors or goals has been a mainstay in schools for a long time, and rightfully so — it works! But creating a system in where students can earn tokens and actually spend them to get something they would want is a game changer. To me, one of the most promising aspects of kidtoken from a teaching standpoint, is the autonomy it creates. Every classroom or school is different and every teacher has their own needs. Some might use the incentives to reach academic goals, others might use it as a classroom management tool. Personally, I will use kidtoken as a way to teach children about compassion, mindfulness, and kindness. In my opinion, this is the most important component missing in they way we teach students today. These skills often need to be taught explicitly and there needs to be ways to show how compassionate action “pays” off in the long run. And so we have kidtoken.”

Vision for the Future

Our team is working tirelessly to develop the functionality of the concept of kidtoken, and to partner with merchants for expanding the e-commerce section so children can really enjoy the rewards from reaching their goals. We hope to one day be implemented into classrooms across America, allowing parents and teachers to work together and track students; progress and rewards from the site or app. We are very excited about the future of kidtoken and passionate about making digitized financial education fun for parents and their kids.

Building the Next Economic Landscape with OST

As we build and develop kidtoken with a focus on creating a gamified user experience that kids will love and see real value in, we are also incredibly excited about our opportunity as one of the first Proof of Concept projects built on OST.

As a service, OST KIT gives you all the tools you need to run your blockchain-powered economy on open scalable sidechains. Looking back on the developer challenge experience, we recieved amazing support from the OST team every step of the way & thru the use of the OST APIs we were able to launch kidtoken and begin processing transactions on the testnet in an incredibly short amount of time.

The OST Alpha Phase III testing is beginning very soon, including the OST wallet ledger API as well, which will allow us to add even more functionality to our kidtoken POC.

For anyone interested in learning more about what OST is building as they empower companies to easily & quickly launch their own branded tokens, we’d recommend watching this excellent AMA that CEO Jason Goldberg & Benjamin Bollen, the Chief Blockchain Strategist hosted last week.

At kidtoken we love the idea of a world in which kids learn the value of spending and saving at an early age. We believe a digital tokenized currency makes sense, one that is almost completely free of fees, allows for micro transactions where parents & teachers can incentivize anything, and kids can trade or save their kidtoken as well as set savings goals right from our app.

Together with OST, we look forward to the exciting possibilites to come.