Jon Marshall wants to get kids into cryptocurrency

Pentagram partner Jon Marshall is hoping that his latest project will introduce children to the world of cryptocurrency.

A collaboration with fintech start-up company Pigzbe, the new work wants to help “children and their families learn the principles of 21st century finance through cryptocurrency savings and hands-on play.” Sure beats settling down to all 704 pages of Thomas Piketty’s economic tome Capital.

Jon and his team have developed both a physical ‘Piggy-Wallet’ and an educational app to make the process as painless as possible. They see the result as providing a “tangible interface to digital money,” with the idea being that it can act as an up-to-date replacement for the old school piggy bank that some of used to raid back when in order to get our hands on a 99 with a flake on one of those scorching, blue-skied days that seemed to last from July to September in the summers of our long-lost childhoods. Not that we’re sentimental or nostalgic or anything.

Working closely with Pigzbe’s CEO Filippo Yacob, Jon translated the app’s gamified approach to contemporary finance into the physical realm by looking toward video game controllers as a source of inspiration. Lego came in handy, too, with the iconic bricks providing the perfectly pink plastic casing this little crypto-mad piggy goes to market in.

Things have certainly changed since we had a single pound coin slid into our clammy little hands to go wild in Woolworths with as children.