In a recent issue of the UK newspaper The Times, in the “Births, Marriages and Death” section, there was an announcement from a couple who had given birth to a baby girl (Izabella). There was one thing, though, that distinguished this announcement from the other thousand or so birth announcements in The Times every year: the couple was asking for Bitcoin (BTC) donations for the baby’s “college fund.”

Here is a photo of this announcement from a Bitcoin.com news report:

As you can see, it seems that the parents, Wioletta and Peter, decided that, given the high cost of a college education (around $50,000 for a three-year Bachelor’s degree in the UK) and the current relatively low price of Bitcoin, this might be a perfect time to start asking people for donations in Bitcoin for the college fund of baby Izabella (who was born on January 6th, just three days Bitcoin's 10th birthday).

There are two other interesting things about this announcement.

First, it features a Bitcoin vanity address: 1ZAB5XeKMdvax2S8eZT7GQ6Nj4xjbsw1Y. At press time, there is 1.05481667 BTC at this address. Although this is currently only worth around $3,866, by the time Izabella is ready to go to college, if Bitcoin bulls are right, even this small amount of bitcoin could be worth more than enough to fund her education.

Second, probably because The Times does not allow images to be used in such announcements or it would have too expensive to have included an image, the parents referred to Izabella’s Bitcoin wallet using a 33-character address instead of a QR code; of course, using the latter would have made life easier for all those kind enough to contribute to this fund.

Here are a couple of the more interesting reactions on Reddit in a thread about this story:

“Disguised way to beg…”

“Also shame on the baby’s parents for linking their baby’s ID with her bitcoin address in public. Hope by the time she grows up, various privacy tools like coinjoin will be the default in wallets.”

Featured Image Credit: Photo via Pexels.com