When Richard’s 5-year-old goddaughter asked ‘What’s money?’ – after he’d consumed 100+ hours of monetary theory podcasts – he realized bitcoin’s future needed physical magic. That stumper birthed LightningPiggy: a tactile sat-stacking revolution.
More than a device, it’s an open-source time capsule – repaintable plywood bodies whispering scarcity to kindergarteners, Nostr Wallet Connect guarding savings, and MicroPythonOS whispering, ‘You’ll own your financial future.’ Meet the piggy bank turning ‘1 BTC = 1 BTC’ into playground wisdom.
Where it All Began
- Is there a childhood memory or personal “aha moment” that sparked the creation of LightningPiggy?
From the early days of the Lightning Network, I’d wanted to build a simple bitcoin-enabled piggy bank for my goddaughter. The spark to bring it to life came during a Bolt.Fun Lightning competition. At the first Bitcoin Amsterdam conference, I found myself at a bar with the LNbits crew when I mentioned to Ben Arc that I was looking for a developer to help get the project off the ground.
He introduced me to Black Coffee who, as it turned out, had been thinking along similar lines for his own kids.We decided to team up and enter the competition together. In no time, Black Coffee had built a working prototype, complete with a slick video demo. Just like that, LightningPiggy was born!
- Why teach kids about bitcoin now – especially via physical tech vs. an app?
The timing couldn’t be better. We’re at the dawn of a monetary revolution. If we can help every child start saving in bitcoin from day one, they can bypass the broken financial system entirely and step into a future rooted in freedom and prosperity. With savings that grow in purchasing power over time, these kids will be better equipped to thrive in a world transitioning from paper political money to sound money.
When it comes to physical tech versus an app, our mission is to make it fun and easy for kids to receive sats and watch their savings grow. By using a simple, affordable hardware device dedicated to saving, children can develop healthy sat stacking habits while avoiding the distractions and downsides of smartphones.
- How did you test early prototypes with kids? Any hilarious or heartwarming reactions?
When I gave one of the early prototypes to my five-year-old goddaughter, she immediately asked, “What’s a piggy bank?” I told her it was for saving money. Then came the follow-up: “What’s money?” I was stumped. Despite having listened to more than a hundred hours of Robert Breedlove’s What Is Money? podcast, in that moment, I had no idea how to distill such a deep topic into something a five-year-old could grasp.
That experience was humbling and incredibly clarifying. It forced me to reflect more deeply and sharpen my fundamental understanding of money as a tool to preserve and communicate our time and energy.
Building LightningPiggy
- How do you explain “invisible money” to a 6-year-old? What metaphors work best?
Paradoxically, it seems easier for a six-year-old to grasp this concept than a sixty-year-old economics professor. One way to explain it is through the idea of a Magic Piggy Bank: A special bank where only you have the secret code to open it. When you receive sats, they stay safely inside forever, unless you decide to spend them.
Another approach is to describe satoshis as special tokens you can trade for snacks, toys, or games. There are only a limited number in the world, which makes them valuable. You don’t need permission from anyone to use them, introducing concepts like scarcity, global acceptance, and peer-to-peer exchange.
Over time, kids will begin to understand that bitcoin is a “purchasing power go up technology”. And when that clicks, they’ll likely start encouraging their friends to exchange and save in sats too.
- How has building LightningPiggy changed your relationship with money?
Working on this project alongside an incredible group of open-source contributors has deepened my belief that money should be, above all, a community good; not something imposed by any central authority.
At its core, bitcoin is a movement of people, and the more tools we build together, the faster it will grow, the stronger it will become, and the sooner we’ll all benefit. Thanks to its open-source foundation, this project will outlive us all, and with any luck, make an early and lasting, positive impact on people’s lives.
- How do you handle bitcoin’s volatility when displaying “savings” to a child?
The default configuration shows the number of sats saved without displaying a fiat equivalent. I much prefer this setup, not just because 1 BTC = 1 BTC, but also because it helps avoid the emotional rollercoaster of price-watching. Interestingly, while several parents have asked for the option to display the fiat value, we’ve had zero requests from the kids themselves.
On a related note, we have a “purchasing power” screen on the roadmap. This optional feature will allow savings to be represented in relatable, real-world items such as books, skateboards, and/or bicycles, helping kids visualise the value of their savings grow over time and potentially help them to save for a particular goal.
- Security is critical when money’s involved. How do you balance accessibility for kids with bitcoin’s “don’t-trust, verify” ethos?
Great questions. This one has many levels, particularly because both security and convenience are on opposite ends of a spectrum. Firstly, bitcoin on Lightning is inherently less secure than bitcoin held in cold storage, so we always recommend that users keep an eye on the savings accumulated. It’s wise to transfer larger amounts to cold storage for added security. As a side note, this can be automated in LNbits using the Boltz extension.
From day one, our goal has been to give users the freedom to choose their preferred setup and trusted funding source. While we advocate for self-custodial setups, we understand that may not be suitable for everyone.
Initially, self-custody was achieved by running a full node, LND and LNbits. To make things more accessible, we became one of the first hardware projects to integrate Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC). Full credit to Thomas for upgrading the libraries and enabling NWC functionality on the ESP32 platform.
NWC simplifies the process of linking the device to a user’s chosen funding source with just a single QR code scan. Whether that source is your own self-custodial Lightning wallet, a trusted family member’s wallet, or a third-party company’s wallet, the setup process remains the same.
Any wallet that supports NWC will work. We’re particularly fond of how Alby offers sub-accounts which are handy for hosting multiple piggy banks from one funding source. This can be self-hosted on your own hardware (e.g. a Start9 server) or run in the cloud via Alby’s Pro Cloud service.
NWC also allows users to define permission levels, such as to receive-only or spend with limits, providing flexibility and control over how the piggy interacts with the wallet.
- Kids outgrow toys fast. How does LightningPiggy stay engaging as they age?
This is an important consideration for the project, as we want the device to provide many years of use. At its core, the piggy is simply a screen and microcontroller that can be easily rehoused in a new case. As the child grows and their tastes change, so can their choice of enclosure, whether it’s handmade, 3D printed, built out of LEGO, or laser-cut.
One popular option is a paintable plywood model designed by contributor LoneRookie, which has been a hit with families who enjoy arts and crafts. We also offer several downloadable 3D models, including the original Genesis Piggy, the charming Robotechy Piggy (contributed by Ben and Zac Weeks), and the sleek ZapBox! Currently in development is a retro-style case inspired by 1980s Zenith CRT monitors. These are just a few of the many innovative ideas shared with us. Visit lightningpiggy.com to explore our gallery of piggies in the wild!
With the new LightningPiggy 2.0 that runs as an app, we ensure that when a child eventually outgrows their physical piggy, the device doesn’t become obsolete. It can be repurposed with another MicroPythonOS app, or passed along to a sibling, friend, or family member, continuing its life as a fun, educational tool that makes sats-saving a natural part of growing up.
- What was the most unexpected technical hurdle in merging bitcoin/Lightning with a child-friendly device?
For me, the most surprising part has been the technical leap from a proof-of-concept to a consumer-friendly device. Originally, the process of flashing the piggy software was a sticking point: it was too complex for most people, myself included. That all changed when Thomas joined the project. Building on Black Coffee’s groundbreaking work, he transformed the setup experience, making installation and configuration so simple it’s now ‘Uncle Jim’ approved 🙂
Quote from Thomas: “A technical hurdle with Lightning in general and the Piggy specifically is the backend, aka the payment provider, aka the custody solution. It has to be online 24/7 with a good connection and uptime so it’s much more powerful, but equally more difficult to setup and maintain than a simple offline on-chain bitcoin wallet or signing device.
So LNBits handles that, but it’s not easy to setup for non technical users. That’s why we added Nostr Wallet Connect, a bleeding edge protocol that’s being added by many different lightning custody solutions, including LNBits itself.”
- What’s your favorite parent testimonial about their child interacting with LightningPiggy?
We’ve been fortunate to receive a lot of encouraging feedback from our community of builders. One standout example is Ian Foster, who’s actively growing a bitcoin circular economy in Malawi. He built two piggies for his own children, with the hope of planting seeds, both figuratively and literally, to help spread the project locally and with other bitcoin communities.
What’s Next?
- What’s your reply to critics who say, “Kids should learn fiat first”?
Fortunately, I haven’t yet encountered that kind of critic, but no doubt I should be prepared. When learning something new, we rarely start by learning how to do it badly with disastrous effects.
Bitcoin is vastly superior to fiat as money and is on track to surpass all forms of political money and legacy stores of value. So why should a child first be taught to use an inferior system, only years later to unlearn it and relearn the best system? It simply doesn’t make sense.
- If you could have dinner with Satoshi Nakamoto, what would you have and what will you talk about?
It would have to be over two pizzas, maybe something porky to help plug the project! On that note, I’d love to hear his tooth fairy and piggy bank stories. What a brilliant icebreaker that would be. I always enjoy asking bitcoiners about their earliest memories of money; those first interactions might reveal how they ended up diving so deep down the rabbit hole.
- How can the global bitcoin community support your mission?
The easiest way to get involved is to onboard a child to bitcoin by building them a LightningPiggy – it really is child’s play! If you’re hosting meet-ups or part of a community group with other parents, why not run a LightningPiggy build workshop? We’re putting together documentation and a video guide to help make these gatherings fun and easy to run.
If you’d like more information, feel free to get in touch, or join our community chat on Telegram and Nostr (+corus). You can also email us at oink@lightningpiggy.com.
Thanks again for the super list of questions and for having us!
Build your own: https://www.lightningpiggy.com/build
Chat with our community: https://t.me/LightningPiggy
Join our shadowy super coders: https://github.com/LightningPiggy
Follow us on Nostr: npub1y2qcaseaspuwvjtyk4suswdhgselydc42ttlt0t2kzhnykne7s5swvaffq
Follow us on Primal (a Nostr app): https://primal.net/LightningPiggy
