Fun With Cryptocurrencies 1

Fun With Cryptocurrency

Ford Hayes

UCSB
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Fun With Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies are something that a lot of people have heard news about. Some people

consider it to be a scary mess of volatile charts, while other people see it as an opportunity to

make some serious profits. Crypto is a very complex topic that is hard to get a complete and full

understanding of, which scares some people away. However, I believe that it can still be very

interesting and I wanted to get a better idea of what the cryptocurrency process is like, especially

since I am invested in the markets. I chose to translate the economics article Cryptocurrency by

Monia Milutinovic, into a children’s book. This article gave a detailed analysis on the economic

effects of cryptocurrency, and the intended audience are educated people who want to learn more

about economics. However, even younger kids still know what money is, as they use their

allowance to buy a game or a candy bar, and my goal was to get these younger students

interested in crypto. In this translation, I tried to keep the big ideas intact, but use basic

descriptions and wording to not overwhelm the reader with confusion. Translating this complex

topic into simpler terms that less knowledgeable readers could understand helps spark their

interest in crypto, and give them a very basic understanding of what may possibly be the money

of the future.

Translating a complex topic from a journal article into a different genre, a children’s

book, was my main objective at hand. Younger readers, who are not as knowledgeable compared

to the typical reader of an economics journal, was the new audience that I was writing for.

Specifically, I wrote with the mindset that my readers were around the age of an older

elementary school student. As a result, a children’s book, with writing that is more tailored

toward younger readers, was the genre choice that would be most effective. Lisa Bickmore

describes how choosing and writing for a specific genre is a process of taking that genre to frame
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a piece of writing (Bickmore, 2016). This was what I did during my writing process. The

conventions of a children’s book are that it contains informal and fun descriptions of the topics at

hand, illustrations, a fun font choice, and more. I used these conventions to frame my translation

process from the journal article, and guide what information I include, and the style I do it in.

Translating the rhetoric and style of the writing was the first task I had. A journal article

has a purpose of presenting information in an informative, professional way to the reader. To

accomplish this, it contains large paragraphs with lots of information, and the occasional picture

or graph to enhance the reader’s understanding. However, a children’s book usually has a more

informal and fun style to the writing, along with frequent pictures, to appease a younger

audience. Karen Rosenberg referred to this topic as “rhetorical reading”, in which “texts work to

persuade readers” (Rosenberg, 2011). There are sets of practices that texts follow to engage in

conversation with the reader. For a journal article and a children’s book, these sets of practices

are very different from each other. My task was to change the professionalism of the article to

something more fun and informal, similar to the style of a children’s book.

My first method of changing the style was substituting some of the specific vocabulary

words. For example, instead of using the word “skyrocket”, I changed it for “swing”. Younger

readers are familiar with swings, and it is a fun way to describe movements in a chart. For the

word “cryptography”, I replaced it with “number puzzle”, because it gives a more basic

description to not overwhelm the reader with complex vocabulary. I also created a character

named Bit, as a friendly face and a sort of guide through the book to make it more fun for

younger readers. The style of a piece of writing is an important aspect to make sure the writing is

well-suited for the given audience.

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Choosing what content to include in my translation was my next objective. Not every

detail of the journal article needs to be put into the children’s book. Scott McCloud refers to this

as the “choice of moment”. The main goal is to “connect the dots”, by showing the most

important moments that matter, and cutting the moments that are not as significant (McCloud,

2006). My main goal with writing my children’s book was to capture the big ideas and a basic

overview of cryptocurrencies, and also present a few consequences of them. While reading the

journal article, there were some sections that had some good information, but it felt too specific

to include in my translation, such as the topic of crypto in Serbia and Switzerland. Instead, I

mainly included information about what crypto is, how it is obtained, why people use it, and

other general things that give a good overview. These are the “moments” that I felt were most

important. For example, cryptocurrencies have multiple uses, but I chose the possibility of

making a profit to write about. I wrote “A main reason why people buy my friends and I is to sell

us later for more money. This is called making a profit”, as I feel that making profits with crypto

is the most important and interesting use for them. Choosing only the most important topics for

the content of my translation makes it more fitting for my intended audience.

Before I started writing the translation, a challenge was finding the exact topic that I

wanted to write about. I knew that I wanted to write about something related to economics, and

then narrowed it down to cryptocurrency. However, there are lots of different aspects about

cryptocurrency that I could have chosen to write about, and I was thinking of different questions

that could guide me through my topic choice. Dana Driscoll refers to this as deductive and

inductive approaches to developing a guiding question. The deductive approach starts with a

hypothesis, and finds research to back it up, while the inductive approach starts with a question,

and finds information to develop the question into a conclusion. (Driscoll, 2011). In my case, a
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possible deductive question could have been, “Is cryptocurrency good for the economy?”

Instead, my writing translation followed the inductive approach more, and a possible question

that my writing follows is, “What is the main process of obtaining and using crypto, and what are

some consequences?” The inductive approach feels better for a more general overview writing

focus, compared to a hypothesis and specific question to answer. Another challenge I faced

during the research process was the sheer complexity of the topic. Cryptocurrency is a very hard

topic to get a full and complete understanding of. I read multiple articles very carefully and got a

general understanding of the topic. A basic understanding of crypto is what I am trying to present

in my children’s book, and finding the right wording to change such a complex topic into

something more simple was a challenge for me. I enjoyed making this translation because

explaining crypto in simpler terms was an opportunity to enhance my understanding of the topic,

in addition to reading articles about it.

Overall, this translation process of taking a complex topic and putting it in simpler terms

was a positive experience. If you can explain something complicated in a way that is more

simple to understand, that indicates that you have a good understanding of the topic at hand. I

feel that due to the complexity of cryptocurrency, my translation will not be completely coherent

to all readers. I just wanted to give the younger students a basic idea of what the concept of

crypto is, and possibly get them interested in wanting to learn more about it, or just economics in

general. In my personal experience, I read a children’s book about the periodic table at the age of

6, and I did not understand much of the content. However, I got a very basic idea of the fact that

different elements make up our surroundings. My goal with my translation is to not give the

reader a complete understanding of the topic, but instead, just get them interested in what could

possibly be the money of the future.

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Works Cited

Bickmore, L. (2016). Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (Eco)Systems.

Open English @ SLCC.

Driscoll, D. (2011). Introduction to Primary Research: Observations, Surveys, and Interviews.

Parlor Press.

McCloud, S. (2006). Making comics: Storytelling secrets of comics, manga and graphic novels.

New York: Harper.

Milutinovic, M. (2018). Cryptocurrency. Switzerland: AgEcon.

Rosenberg, K. (2011). Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources. Parlor Press.
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