It’s an old story about parenting, getting a child a hollow plastic or ceramic pig with a slot on the back so that coins can be inserted and stored. After inserting enough coins the pig would be smashed open and the coins used to buy something. A new Kickstarter by ERNIT seeks to bring the piggy bank into the digital currency era.

ERNIT is a smartphone app that is connected to a physical “piggy bank” that uses light as feedback to show how much has been saved towards a given goal. The piggy bank part of ERNIT looks like a slightly deflated, mini-pig with a very big nose and a lack of pigmentation. The pig comes in white, but is planned for pink and black. The most prominent feature of the piggy bank, a huge nose, is the part that lights up with a ring that fills in as goals are approached.

Pressing the nose also causes the eyes to animate. The pig is quite cute.

The Kickstarter just began and as of writing has 33 days to go and $11,000 has been pledged of the $80,000 goal.

According to the Kickstarter the piggy bank works with an app (for iOS and Android) that allows parents to set goals for their kids–such as a comic book, teddy bear, or bicycle. Once goals are set, money can be contributed to the system, which is then tracked towards said goal.

The app and the pig, of course, are designed for parents to assist children in using it to save up so the app is separated into two sections: child and parent.

The child may set goals, and have multiple goals, but the parent decides if the goal stays or not. With the app the child may also check to see how much savings has been put towards a particular goal. ERNIT also explained that during the design process of the app the UI was designed to be intuitive to small children and pre-teens.

Parents and friends can contribute to the fund in various ways including credit/debit cards, bank transfers, receive from other ERNIT owners and from bitcoin contributions. As for getting it back out again once a goal is met–so the child can use the saved up money–it’s possible to pull it out via a bank transfer or in bitcoin.

In keeping with the piggy bank nostalgia, parents can use the Ernit.com website to set ways to contribute money from allowances to amounts for chores–it would be possible to set a weekly amount, $1 for doing the dishes, $0.50 for taking out the trash, etc.

Of course, according to ERNIT this data is collected (anonymously) by the parent side of the app and collated to give other parents an idea of how much money they spend on their children for allowance and chores. This may give users an idea of how other much other parents pay on average. (Although it would seem that data would be interesting, it does not seem to take into account demographics or usage types.)

Interested in an ERNIT piggy bank? There’s still time to support the Kickstarter.

The cryptocurrency connection

The connection of ERNIT to Bitcoin is somewhat tenuous. The Kickstarter mentions being able to pay into the piggy bank app with bitcoins and pay out as well, but details on that use are somewhat bare.

Everything about ERNIT suggests that the funds (including bitcoins) are stored by the Ernit.com site and accessed via that site and the app–the pig is a peripheral used to embody the “piggy bank” concept.

There’s also the matter that saving in actual bitcoins towards a particular goal could be problematic given the volatility of bitcoins. It seems most likely that bitcoins transferred to the device would be put through a bitcoin payment processor into local currency rather than stored as bitcoins.

Featured image credit: via ERNIT.com