Newspaper Ad Seeks Donations for Bitcoin Baby’s College Fund

Despite being just one week old, Izabella Bowles carries great expectations upon her tiny shoulders. The baby, born on Jan. 6, will go to college when she’s older, if parents Wioletta and Peter can help it. What’s more, her future tuition fees will be paid for using what many believe to be the future of money – bitcoin.

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Wanted: Donors to Support Bitcoin Baby’s College Fund

The listing in The Times looks a little different from those adjacent to it on the births, marriages and deaths page. Aside from the prominent black box delineating it, there’s the unusual title – “Bitcoin Baby” – and the string of 33 multi-case letters and numbers running across the bottom. Appearing in the same newspaper from which Satoshi famously derived his encoded genesis block headline (“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”), the ad’s placement appears to have been a knowing nod from Izabella’s parents. Just three days earlier, Bitmex used the same British newspaper to take out a double-page ad marking Bitcoin’s 10th anniversary.

While the Bowles family are not the first to attempt to solicit donations for their child’s education, their methodology is certainly novel. There are signs that their college campaign has been successful so far, with little Izabella’s BTC address having amassed 0.84 BTC from 75 transactions in the past few days. Interestingly, the address in question, 1ZAB5XeKMdvax2S8eZT7GQ6Nj4xjbsw1Y, bears more than a passing resemblance to the name of the child who will one day inherit it.

Mixed Opinions About the Bitcoin Baby’s Fund

With the average cost of a four-year British university education priced at $52,000, Izabella’s fund is already 7 percent of the way there. Given the difficulty associated with manually typing in a bitcoin address, the donations that have arrived so far are likely to have come from the address being shared online rather than extracted from the print edition of The Times.

On Reddit, opinion has been divided about the bitcoin baby’s college fund, with one describing the parent’s initiative as a “disguised way to beg.” Others applauded the parents’ ingenuity, but took issue with the fact that the baby’s real-world identity will be forever tied with a BTC address. Predicting how much bitcoin will be worth 18 years from now is all but impossible. If past performance is anything to go by, however, Izabella’s 0.84 BTC might already be enough to fund her college tuition in 2037.

What are your thoughts on the bitcoin baby’s college fund? Should her parents be applauded or criticized for their actions? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Reddit.

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