Regina teacher offering lessons in cryptocurrency

A Regina high school teacher is walking his students through the inner workings of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin was invented in 2008 and started being used as a currency in 2009. It’s the first decentralized cryptocurrency, meaning it can operate autonomously through the use of smart contacts.

Today, Bitcoin is used more as a store of value rather than a medium of exchange or a unit of account. Before its creation, several other digital currency technologies were created and released, with the first being David Chaum’s eCash in the 1980s.

Tyler Pokoyoway, who teaches at Campus Regina Public, has built a course that teaches his students the ins and outs of Bitcoin. Pokoyoway said the course will cover a lot of different things.

“Financial literacy is lacking in the public in general, so (this course is) giving a bit of background on what money is and how it works and then putting a Bitcoin spin on it in terms of what Bitcoin is and why it functions as money and does it better in some people’s opinions,” said Pokoyoway.

He said there are a lot of benefits that come with using a currency like Bitcoin.

“It’s a value transfer protocol, so its information is on a protocol that’s decentralized,” he said. “There’s no third party controlling it, and so you can send value to anyone around the world at any time without anyone saying you can’t, and that’s powerful in terms of the economy, global trade, and then even self-governed people reaping the fruits of their labour without the money that’s being deflated away.”

He said a lot of other countries are using currencies like Bitcoin and it’s only becoming more popular with places like El Salvador recently adopting it as a legal tender in 2021.

“We find that in countries where the inflation rate is way higher — like 50 per cent to 100 per cent inflation — you can’t store your money (or) your value in the money of the current currency,” Pokoyoway said.

“So people are looking for alternatives and Bitcoin has been a game-changer for a lot of developing countries (and) war-torn countries where they can actually store value, take it with them and not have it left behind or in the hands of corrupt governments.

“In Western society, we’re a little protected from it because we’re a little bit more advanced and we all have access to banking accounts or chequing accounts. A lot of the population of the world is unbanked, which means they don’t have access to the same things we do or credit or things like that, so (cryptocurrency) is being adopted in other places, just not really the western world.”

He said cryptocurrency is a fairly new concept and believes it will only grow in popularity, comparing it to the evolution of the internet.