From Ghana to the Bronx, Meet the Teen Bitcoiners Who Build the Future

Jemina Joseph, 18, has a summer job as a social media executive in a crypto startup after graduating from high school in the Bronx. And she learned how to make her first cryptocurrency transaction, a purchase using zcash, with the Flexa mobile app.

It was a summer day, so hot that the air outside was like soup, when Joseph joined 10 other teenagers inside the BXL business incubator in a dilapidated neighborhood in the south of Bronx. Their former English teacher in high school, Carlos Acevedo, organized with representatives of Electronic Coin Company, Gemini, Flexa and Casa a two-day workshop for local students interested in cryptocurrency.

Emmanuel Ntiamoab, 18, soon a computer science student at the University of Buffalo, sits near Joseph during the lecture.

"As South Bronx students, we do not often have the opportunity to be part of something bigger," Ntiamoab said. "So, if this cryptocurrency is really like the Internet, I want to learn to be part of it. I am interested in development. "

Many of these students come from immigrant, Ghanaian, Jamaican and Dominican communities. Moreover, even among American students, there are several Puerto Ricans. Most of them work after clbades to help their families. They are familiar with cross-border payments in underfunded communities. What they do not know are the different tools available today.

"There is a large population of unbanked and under-banked people right here," Acevedo told CoinDesk. "They pay eviction costs. … There are fewer bank branches in the Bronx than in any other borough. "

That's true. The streets are full of places to borrow, sell jewelry and send payments abroad, all with brightly colored signs and fees. Electronic Coin Company Vice President of Marketing Josh Swihart told CoinDesk that each student received a small zash allowance for attending the workshop.

"I'd love it to happen again in other cities," Swihart told CoinDesk. "We've already been asked questions about Oakland."

Although Joseph already had a summer job in the industry, several other students wanted to find an internship or stay after for business coaching at the BXL Business Incubator.

They have now joined dozens of teenagers around the world who told CoinDesk their intention to join the cryptocurrency industry, starting with using cryptographic badets to pursue their own education.

Meet the teens

That's what Anish Agnihotri, a 16-year-old Toronto-based developer, told CoinDesk he's been involved in open source projects since discovering bitcoin in 2015.

"I love that no matter who, no matter where, can get in touch with such a welcoming community of builders," said Agnihotri. "I worked with people from Africa, Mexico, China, through things like Gitcoin."

Fellow of Toronto Talha Atta, 17, told CoinDesk that he was immediately inspired when he heard about bitcoin in the news in 2017.

"Remittances, being able to transfer money abroad at no cost, would really help my family in Pakistan," Atta said. "I just want to find the right technology to solve problems and reduce inequalities."

He has already started experimenting with such cases of use. Earlier this year, Atta won a prize hackathon with friends by creating an IOTA-powered micropayment system for people who do not have WiFi to exploit the connections of other users.

Whether it's creating their own business, studying computer science, doing an internship, contributing to open source projects on GitHub or helping to educate their peers, here is: 10 other teenagers to watch as they emerge from the cryptosystem:

1. Elisha Owusu Akyaw

Few bitcoiners are as active as the founder of BlockXAfrica, 17 years old. The Ghanaian company Akyaw organizes educational meetings in an electronic newsletter and a Telegram group with nearly 300 subscribers, as well as 16 teen volunteers who help organize meetings.

"We are working on content in local languages ​​and our content in English is still based on local examples and elements relevant to the average Ghanaian," he said.

Akyaw is ramping up BlockXAfrica programming this year, with plans for a hackathon, a developer training program, and an online course by 2020. He said developer training would focus on apps that allow users to use the cryptocurrency that exploits interfaces that the local community already knows.

"Africans are more used to sending money via mobile phone numbers than email addresses," he said. Ultimately, its goal is to make BlockXAfrica a monetized company, with paid training and exclusive content. Until then, the group has focused on spreading high quality information and fighting the myth that all cryptocurrencies are "a scam," he said.

"The most of [the participants] are teenagers because I started talking to my friends, "added Akyaw.

2. Harshita Arora

At the age of 16, this entrepreneur from Saharanpur, in the north of India, has already sold him Crypto Price Tracker mobile application, which monitors 1,000 crypto-currencies out of 20 exchanges in 10 languages, Redwood City Ventures for a million dollars.

The iOS app maps the price of bitcoin in 32 different currencies. His global and friendly orientation earned him the "Woman of the year"At a CryptoChicks conference in Toronto in April.

Despite an badault death threats and cyberbullyingArora continues to work with Redwood City Ventures to further develop the product, which has been downloaded by more than 25,000 people to date.

Instead of letting the troll down, Arora used his income to buy textbooks and ask for a O-1A visa stay and work in the United States. Since then, she has moved to San Francisco and hopes to stay in the cryptocurrency sector..

Now, his second app, Cryptos Stickers, features more than 50 iMessage stickers related to various cryptographic mementos.

3. Anand Patel

In London, Anand Patel's node builder helped at least 10 people set up their own personal nodes for various crypto-currencies, in addition to a hundred people using his scripts to run nodes.

"For Bitcoin, I have a lightning node that tests its Layer 2 solution," Patel told CoinDesk. "I wanted to have more impact on new technology and help different communities by creating installation scripts to simplify the process for new users trying to configure miners and full nodes."

Since his first discovery of bitcoin four years ago, Patel has graduated from blockchain workshop led by Jimmy Song, lead contributor to Bitcoin Core, and helped secure networks for evidence-based encryption projects such as PIVX, Chaincoin, OXY and Rise.

"I had the basic skills, so I thought I'd just like to experiment, see what's done, run the software of different people and learn the process," he said, adding that he was inspired to help facilitatea new generation of entrepreneurs who value freedom and co-creation through decentralization. "

4. Kiki Pichini

Meanwhile, in the US state of Washington, a 15-year-old figure skater is starting research to develop a blockchain application for local fruit producers and sellers.

Pichini's interest in distributed databases began as he worked with his father to create a community register of competitions and ice skating opportunities. In addition, she started exchanging bitcoin with her parents as a learning exercise.

After attending Song's Bitcoin seminar, Pichini noticed that all the farmers and packing plants in his town were carrying cherries and apples across the country.

"Especially here in Washington, there are a lot of people who mine [bitcoin], She told CoinDesk. "I think that [bitcoin] could actually be used as a means of payment, especially in the wholesale trade. … I think I would like to start my own business and blockchain is one of them. "

5. Ian Lim

The native of Minneapolis, Lim, bought his first bitcoin in 2016, after hearing about it from friends at school, and quickly became a regular at local bitcoin meetings.

When Lim's mother had serious health problems after several strokes, he wondered how to apply his knowledge on the ethics of bitcoin to the health sector.

"In general, what I want is to be at the forefront of blockchain technology in the healthcare industry," Lim told CoinDesk. "Putting myself at home was the best thing I could have done, instead of just reading books, but also meeting people who have experience in this area."

Lim then won a Startup Weekend Minneapolis hackathon in 2017 with a blockchain solution based on Hyperledger called BlocVacwhich allows patients to keep and share their own vaccination records. Since then, Lim has presented his experiences on blockchain at universities such as MIT and community events with TechStars.

"I consider myself primarily an entrepreneur," said Lim. "It's common for people to use apps above [the blockchain]. "

6. Saleem Rashid

This Londoner is known in March 2018 by discover a fault in the Ledger hardware portfolio. His blog post on vulnerability pushed him to Twitter famous, with some conspiracy theorists suggesting that the teenage hacker works for the rival Trezor startup.

In reality, Rashid has contributed to Trezor's firmware code to improve security, although it is not officially involved in the company, and occasionally submits contributions to open source projects such as Bitcoin Core and zcash.

"When we look at history, or even current global affairs in less fortunate places, we can see where a bitcoin could be applied to actually improve people's lives," Rashid told CoinDesk.

Its purpose is to help improve "the security and usability of private key management" in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

For now, Rashid prefers to study and experiment on his own rather than joining a startup or starting his own business.

"I would like to study proposals for improving privacy, such as the evidence of zero knowledge used in zcash," he said.

7. Chanan Sack

In Israel, Sack, 18, has created his own independent work. He teaches developers smart contracts and writes research reports for startups. Up to now, eight developers have taken his course on ethereum, customized for each client. He developed the basic curriculum while learning himself how to deploy the Ethereum code in early 2017.

"You meet a lot of interesting people," Sack told CoinDesk, referring to the Ethereum and Bitcoin communities. "These problems really matter. It is Internet that disrupts something very inherent: money, programmable money. It makes me want to spend my time there, because there is a lot to do here.

Many of the 25 students who attended Sack's lectures at Tel Aviv University are now working on their own open source applications. One of these students even participated in the winning team of Tel Aviv. Bitcoin Embbady 2018 hackathon with a project related to the Lightning Network, a sizing solution for Bitcoin.

Since then, he has also contributed to Andreas Antonopoulos' GitHub resources for Ethereum developers and has created a flash guard on an experimental basis.

"We had a good time, that really helped me in my research," said Sacks about the portfolio he's developed with friends during a hackathon in Tel Aviv. hopes to be able to continue to work on his own in the industry and contribute to open source projects that fascinate him.

8. Ben Kaufman

Kaufman, 18, developer of DAOstack, has started contributing open source ethereum projects in January 2018, after two years of space research.

"I also love the community and the openness of the platform," Kaufman told CoinDesk. "I already suggested an EIP [ethereum improvement proposal]. "

Kaufman dropped out of his first year of high school to start working full time as a freelance mobile application developer in Tel Avivian startups. But getting banking has become a nuisance for the parents of the prodigy.

"In adolescence, I have a lot of problems with banks," Kaufman said. "The concept of bitcoin that allows me to control my own financial badets inspires me a lot."

In addition to conducting ethereum workshops for more than 100 students at The Wagon's coding school in Tel Aviv, Kaufman is currently researching the Lightning Network.

"I'm really interested in how the Lightning Network can bring bitcoin to more widespread adoption," he said. "I'm currently trying to see how I could build something for this purpose."

9. Alex Sicart Ramos

When Ramos completed high school in 2018, he quickly launched his second startup, Shasta, a blockchain energy market. The idea came to this Spanish entrepreneur because his first startup, Sharge, earned him a place in the Forbes 30 under 30 in the list of the European technology sector, could not take off against the regulatory problems related to the electric car and the sharing of energy.

Ramos first heard about cryptocurrency in 2015 on Tim Draper's coworking space in Silicon Valley. In 2018, a team of five helped Ramos launch the ethereum-based Shasta project with a solar-powered pilot in a small Spanish village. Ramos said nearly 2,000 people had used the testnet so far.

"It's a platform that allows consumers and suppliers to connect in a CAD environment. [decentralized autonomous organization]Said Ramos at CoinDesk. "You can manage all payments and receipts, everything that happens in this market. … If we think it makes sense to create a utility token in this program, if it really makes sense, we'll do it. Otherwise, we will raise funds from traditional investors. "

10. Gerald Nash

Gerald Nash, a 19-year-old computer science student, has already completed an internship at Coinbase and directed several programs at the Blockchain Lab at Howard University.

"Many students around me have randomly closed or frozen their Venmo or PayPal accounts, even if there was nothing suspicious," Nash told CoinDesk. "The great thing that has inspired me the most is the idea of ​​monetary sovereignty."

Nash discovered bitcoin on Reddit for the first time in 2013 while he was still in high school in Atlanta, Georgia. Now, he organizes events on campus to teach students how to manage bitcoin portfolios without custody with private keys, with alphanumeric strings serving as pbadwords.

"I am mainly bitcoin and ethereum as two of my favorite projects," he said. "I think in the next five years [crypto] will provide more technical users with greater financial inclusion. … People will have easier access to mobility and growth of their money. "

Image of bitcoiners teens in Ghana (including Elisha Owusu Akyaw, second from left) via BlockXAfrica