The ten year old boy who succeeds on YouTube teaching about cryptocurrencies
At just ten years old, she explains better than many adults what digital currencies are for. As a result, he has more followers on YouTube than Lily Knight, the three-year-old American girl who went viral in 2021 for talking about cryptocurrencies.
What do Lil X - son of the billionaire behind Tesla, Elon Musk - and Alessandro Freitez León, a 10-year-old boy living in Venezuela, have in common? They both have cryptocurrency assets and spend their time learning strategies to best "hedge" their investment. The Venezuelan is also the first Latin American child to debut on YouTube to talk about digital currencies. In a pizza place in Barquisimeto -in central Venezuela- where Alessandro first heard about bitcoin as one of the options offered to his parents as payment methods for that day's meal. His curiosity was such that he came home to research Google about this novel system. And from there, he did not stop. Today it has been four months since he opened his YouTube channel, which more than two thousand subscribers have already joined.
Alessandro's videos and his alter ego on Instagram (@cryptodivertido) surpass in followers the American Lily Knight, a three-year-old girl who went viral in 2021 for explaining the scope of bitcoin and trading platforms using examples from the Peppa Pig cartoon series. "I always wanted to be a YouTuber. After going to eat at that pizzeria, I thought it was important for people to know that they could pay with a digital currency," says the Venezuelan.
Studying, rather than recommending
Alessandro's initial investment was undoubtedly more modest than that of Lil X. He says that he used 10 dollars, an amount that he receives monthly at home and used to spend on candy and some other whims. Now all the money he receives goes to his investments, which he carries with the support of his parents, a journalist, and an administrator.
It was at a pizza place in Barquisimeto -in central Venezuela- where Alessandro first heard about bitcoin as one of the options offered to his parents as payment methods for that day's meal. His curiosity was such that he came home to research Google about this novel system. And from there, he did not stop. Today it has been four months since he opened his YouTube channel, which more than two thousand subscribers have already joined. Alessandro's videos and his alter ego on Instagram (@cryptodivertido) surpass in followers the American Lily Knight, a three-year-old girl who went viral in 2021 for explaining the scope of bitcoin and trading platforms using examples from the cartoon series Peppa Pig. "I always wanted to be a YouTuber. After going to eat at that pizzeria, I thought it was important for people to know that they could pay with a digital currency," says the Venezuelan.
Studying, rather than recommending
Alessandro's initial investment was undoubtedly more modest than that of Lil X. He says that he used 10 dollars, an amount that he receives monthly at home and used to spend on candy and some other whims. Now all the money he receives goes to his investments, which he carries with the support of his parents, a journalist, and an administrator. He has acquired a dozen cryptocurrencies that he knows are long-term investments in these months. "I can't give recommendations on what to buy in my videos; I explain them. Whoever wants to do it can study the exchanges to store their projects and the cryptocurrency itself that they are going to use. You have to know that you are going to risk money," he says. Cryptocurrencies - bitcoin as the most famous - are fully digital currencies that function as a means of commercial exchange. It is virtual money that no country controls, which makes the behavior of its value highly volatile and dependent on the pace of the market. With an initial investment of real money, one enters this modern business "stock exchange".
In the nearly 20 videos he has posted on his YouTube channel so far, Alessandro offers news about the world of digital investment. As well as simple explanations to understand what decentralized finance or holding is, what cryptocurrency mining is based on, and keys to understanding the universe of NFT games. The latter is what excites Alessandro the most: "I liked that through the games I was making money." With small investments, this business model can make purchases in video games of things as varied as virtual "kittens" that are then traded. As a result, it has gained a lot of popularity globally. Even in the hyperinflationary Venezuelan economy, its citizens are looking for alternatives to generate a more solid income.
A different YouTuber
Many of Alessandro's school friends don't quite understand what he talks about in his videos. "I've had to explain in class what bitcoin is all about and what this is all about. I tell them to step by step," he says. He has earned the nickname of "crypto-fun" among his classmates, and, although he says that he is still not recognized in the street, the popularity he is gaining has paid off: he obtained a scholarship for a year of financial studies and English. His mother, Kumar León, admits that she was in "shock" for several days when her son explained to her that he wanted to be a YouTuber: "for me that was playing with slime, spending hours with an eternal booger, as one sees in videos of other children his age." However, when the idea was to enter the world of digital currencies, the story changed. Today she is the one who helps him prepare the scripts of the program and deal with social networks.
"Today, I see it as a way to teach them, to guarantee a future for them. I want them to understand where the money comes from. He told me that he wanted to do something different on YouTube so that his friends would start saving too," says Kumar. And what started as a home project is growing; he says that he has been approached by other parents interested in their children having a better financial education. For Alessandro, this still seems to be a game he enjoys. "I don't want to be like adults who are all day (on social networks) saying what they eat, what they do, telling their whole life stories." Since he was four years old, he still struggled with school math, played soccer, and has been part of the National System of Children and Youth Orchestras of Venezuela, where he learned to play clarinet and flute.
As an adult, he wants to study robotics: "I want to build devices that never existed" Investments in digital currencies? "I'm going to keep doing it until I'm pretty big," he warns. That initial 10 dollar has already turned into 160 dollars. Others, indeed, at 20 years old, didn't even have that saved.