On Friday, husband and wife Peter and Wioletta Bowles published the public Bitcoin address of their newborn baby girl, Izabella, in British rag The Times, intended as a college fund. So far, it contains $3,660.53. Cute, right? The end.
OR NOT. For their good deed, the poor sods have already been lambasted from all sides by the crypto mob (read: Reddit). One Redditor decried the move as a “disguised way to beg.” Others felt that the parents, by linking the newborn Izabella’s address with her identity, hadn’t defended her monetary sovereignty/identity sufficiently. Writes "TheGreatMuffin":
"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."
But what kind of baby needs pseudonymity? Is baby Izabella also a fentanyl trafficker? A Venezuelan dissident? Already, at zero years old, a died-in-the-wool libertarian?
Cryptoglobe, meanwhile, invoked High Bitcoin Theory to denigrate the baby's trust fund:
“...probably either because The Times does not allow images to be used in such announcements, 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.”
Using an innocent baby as a pretext for spewing nonsense about QR codes—and generating clicks—is morally indefensible. Can't we spare the infants our critical eye? There are more important things. The US government is still shut down. The Saudis continue to occupy Yemen. Kylie Jenner has started an Instagram feud with a celebrity egg. And, as always, it is the children who get caught in the crossfire.