We are the founders of The Bitcoin Company, Ben and Ben, AMA
64.4k sats \ 57 comments \ @benthecarman 31 Mar 2022 bitcoin
If you don't know who we are we are benthecarman and Ben Price. We started The Bitcoin Company to try and bring bitcoin to the world!
We just launched our app in the app store where you can buy gift cards with lightning and get sats back. We have tons of more things planned but are starting with just free bitcoin to the plebs.
other things you can ask us about:
  • bitcoin development
  • open sats
  • DLCs
  • working at Visa
  • privacy
  • council of Bens
  • Austin bitdevs
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122 sats \ 2 replies \ @sha256 31 Mar 2022
I'm a normal person. What's the easiest way for me to buy and spend bitcoin privately?
@ben says ur putting a gang of stuff in bitcoin co's app. Isn't it going to be confusing that i can do ten things in it?
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
I'm a normal person. What's the easiest way for me to buy and spend bitcoin privately?
Bisq, a bitcoin atm, or finding someone at your local meetup are probably your best bets for buying. Spending is eaiser, you can use apps like The Bitcoin Company, Fold, Bitrefill, PayWithMoon, or Oshi, to be able to spend privately and relatively easily.
@ben says ur putting a gang of stuff in bitcoin co's app. Isn't it going to be confusing that i can do ten things in it?
Yeah, this will be complicated, most likely not everything will be in the app, just the core functionality (rewards, exchange, banking), and the other random things will be separate projects.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
We have put a ton of time and effort 1) to build a ton of features 2) to make a beautiful design that doesn’t get too complicated
My goal has always been building an app my mom can use. Sharon is a meme at TBC (love you mom).
I hope you’re there with us as we layer in more features and watch the evolution from rewards app to bitcoin banking app
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32 sats \ 1 reply \ @03bc4b51cb 31 Mar 2022 freebie
OP_CTV or APO? ducks
-Chris
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43 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
I like them both. Ultimately I am more pro APO because it gives us some covenants potential while also giving us eltoo. APO also has existed for a lot longer so it seems like it has more community support.
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32 sats \ 2 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022 freebie
how you gonna doxx me right away? I'm @abitcoinperson
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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @k00b 31 Mar 2022
It might be my fault. I thought you were both doxxed already and have been announcing you by name (after I noticed it was on https://opensats.org/).
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36 sats \ 0 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022 freebie
i will get you back for this... someday. still not as bad as Marty doxxing ben's cowboy hat at bitdevs last month
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22 sats \ 6 replies \ @kr 31 Mar 2022
Prediction time...
What products, services, or features will VISA build on Bitcoin or the Lightning Network over time?
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243 sats \ 1 reply \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
I built a lot of bitcoin and lightning proof of concepts with Visa and the research team.
But you have to remember, visa serves the banks, and banks don’t really love bitcoin. When a major player starts to accept bitcoin as an alternative to paying merchant processing fees, I’d imagine a snowball effect begins and visa starts really moving on this front.
Until then, they’ve got a good thing going and game theoretically are not incentivized to change much.
Bonus: maybe an oracle? Visa is one of the most trusted brands in the world. Maybe custody services? They deal a lot with public private keys today and are well equipped with this. Maybe infrastructure? They have some of the highest uptime and reliability out of any company in the world.
But honestly, probably a CBDC platform for central and commercial banks.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 31 Mar 2022
The idea of waiting around until they need to move makes sense.
Bonus sats secured, fascinating take on what VISA could launch in the future!
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72 sats \ 3 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
My guess is probably nothing, they aren't very interested in bitcoin or lightning from what I've heard. The Visa crypto team thinks they are making a difference by buying NFTs
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr 31 Mar 2022
Who will be the next traditional payment company to enter into the Bitcoin/Lightning space?
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122 sats \ 1 reply \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
I think you should attend bitcoin 2022
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 31 Mar 2022
👀
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11 sats \ 3 replies \ @ThrillerX_ 31 Mar 2022
Will yall be at the bitcoin++ hackathon in June? and also Ben Price how do you keep your beard so shiny and fluffy?
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32 sats \ 1 reply \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
of course
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @ThrillerX_ 31 Mar 2022
⚡️🔥⚡️🔥⚡️🔥
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
I’m not sure where I’ll be the week after next tbh. Hopefully tho. Sounds fun.
Literally no maintenance whatsoever lol
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 2 Apr 2022
What about ben swaps? So we can maintain ben privacy?
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin 1 Apr 2022
How much would a typical person have to spend before accumulating the 50,000 sats needed to withdraw?
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @jimmysong 1 Apr 2022
What laptop would you buy if yours broke right now? Justify your answer.
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10 sats \ 5 replies \ @nout 31 Mar 2022
  1. What developments in Bitcoin/Lightning are you the most excited about?
  2. What is your favorite PIN number?
  3. What other interesting things do you have planned for the app? :)
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23 sats \ 0 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
  1. honestly a fucking de-minimus exemption if we can make that happen. Really though, I'm so fucking bullish on bitcoin and lightning to take out the current financial systems (swift, payment networks).... it will be exciting to see how the big guys fight back and what this smart ass community does to stay 10 moves ahead.
  2. 69420
  3. SO MUCH.... a learn and earn education portal for the masses (earn bitcoin to learn bitcoin), Visa cards, Card linked offers coming way sooner than people think, a couple major partnerships with brands that have otherwise never been bitcoin friendly... Carman always gives me shit for wanting to do too much... but we will get it done.
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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
  1. I'm really excited to see what people do with taproot. The applications it will enable on lightning will be incredible. I am really excited to see lnd pushing the charge here, they already merged basic taproot support for the lnd on-chain wallet and are even adding MuSig2 support. I've heard they have some really awesome stuff they are gonna unveil that is enabled by all this too
  2. 6969
  3. Anonymous exchange withdrawals ;)
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @nout 31 Mar 2022
Nice! :) What does (3) mean? Withdrawals from the app to exchange?
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87 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
We are planning to build an exchange and banking into the app this year. Today when you withdrawal from an exchange you give them a bitcoin address and they tie it your user and send you the funds. I've figured out a way so you can provably withdrawal from the exchange without us knowing your address, we would just know your address is one of these 100 (or whatever the size of batch was).
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
withdrawals from our future exchange to your non-custodial wallet :)
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @alex_lewin 31 Mar 2022 freebie
How do you decide how much of your time to split between open source work (e.g. DLCs) and the company?
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153 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
It's hard and something I struggle with a lot. I try to do open source work in my free time, the problem is the company gives me almost no free time (start up life lol). However, there are times where I'll say, this weekend I need to get X open source thing done.
Hackacthons are also great, the last austin pleb lab hackathon I got to do some open source work that I've wanted to commit some time to and was able to accomplish a lot!
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35 sats \ 0 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
Right now... we're in the most critical phase of our business... we have to scrap and fight and work our asses off to survive and grow.
We have a reasearch wing that has given away 8M+ sats for research and try to be smart about how we do it... often attending hackathons and giving bounties to cool projects we'd like to see brought to completion, usually asking for a blog post after they're done. See here and here... we also put out an awesome learning portal that takes a lot of time to create and keep updated with newsletters, etc, but are hopeful that we can provide the community with resources for now.
Our long term goal is to create a profitable business which can give back enormously in the future.
PS: I also founded OpenSats, a 501c3 to support free and open source bitcoin contributors which will be going live at the conference (shhh). We will continue to find clever ways to ask and incentivize our users to give back to the people creating, maintaining, and improving bitcoin moving forward and hope other companies will do the same.
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42 sats \ 8 replies \ @k00b 31 Mar 2022
  1. When and what made you both decide to start TBC?
  2. Who leads the Bens?
  3. What's something you believe about the future of Bitcoin that no other bitcoiners believe (including the most bullish bitcoiners)?
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1047 sats \ 2 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
  1. Ben originally came to me at the pool when we were in Mexico and I agreed to join if he went ahead and tried to do it. Maybe 6 months later Ben and raised money and it was time to get going. I agreed because I loved the vision of trying to be a bitcoin only company that is trying to onboard the normies onto bitcoin. Today most normies are onboarded onto crypto through morrally corrupt places like coinbase, and the bitcoin only exchanges could be doing so much better, so we are gonna try and build the best one stop shop for bitcoin.
  2. All bens are fungible
  3. I think a lot of people will only ever use custodial bitcoin and that's okay. Bitcoin and Lightning will have a hard time scaling to 7+ billion people and getting everyone to manage channels + private keys will be really hard, it might be doable but a lot of people will opt for custodial bitcoin. I think this is okay because there is no longer regulatory hurdles to custody people's money so there won't be 10 banks there will be 1000s and only the best will survive.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 31 Mar 2022
How much time do you spend prepping for bit devs?
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121 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
Getting the topics for bitdevs is something I would be doing anyway, I try to read every mailing list post, go through various github projects and find interesing PRs, and look for interesting discussion on twitter and other platforms.
After we have our list the hard part is going back and re-reading everything to get caught up to speed. Normally this takes just a couple of hours, a lot of things are just repeats/extensions of things we've talked about before, so it's just the newer things (like a new soft fork proposal) that I have to spend time on try and understand, which normally just takes 1-2 reads of the mailing list post + discussions.
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1045 sats \ 4 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022 freebie
  1. Three questions, aggressive.
1a.tldr: It really all became real in a pool in Guadalajara, Mexico with Benthecarman and Katie the Russian.
I have been thinking about starting a company my whole life, but never quite knew what it would be, I just knew that I would take one big stab at it and that I should really have a solid understanding and conviction of what it was when it all began. After bouncing around aimlessly in a fiat world looking for purpose, I found Bitcoin. I've always loved game theory, economics, psychology, math, and always knew something was "off" with the wolrd... especially after learning Keynesian macroeconomics in college... so Bitcoin really clicked for me and changed my perspective on life... gave me hope for doing something with a purpose.
I left to take any job I could find in the space and landed as the first PM @ Visa Crypto where I build out a ton of proof of concept bitcoin payment stuff with them... but eventually grew very tired of constantly being asked to focus on stablecoin and CBDC stuff, when all I wanted to do was Bitcoin. When COVID hit, I left to start nomading around the world to places that let me live my life (not San Francisco) and ended up in Guadalajara, Mexico sharing an apartment with Katie the Russian. We invited carman down to come live with us. And we we're in the pool on the top floor when I told him the idea for The Bitcoin Company, and asked if he would join if I left Visa to get it started. He said yes... and from that point on... it was going to happen.
The Bitcoin Company is here to bring Bitcoin to as many people in the world as possible. We are a bunch of bitcoiners sick of the way the world works today and think that the best way to help people (who we believe are really fucked otherwise) is to provide them a reasonable alternative to the traditional banking system... a way to opt out and get the same traditional banking services, and bitcoin services in one place.
I'm not sure why Carman is doing it... but I love the guy.
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31 sats \ 2 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
  1. all ben's are fungible
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31 sats \ 1 reply \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
  1. tough... I think The Bitcoin Company will buy a very large bank like JP Morgan or some fiat fractional reserve bank that goes bust due to their high risk fractional reserve BS ... would be a great way to save on banking licenses
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 31 Mar 2022
What's your favorite project that Open Sats has funded?
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Undergotten 31 Mar 2022 freebie
Thank you. Are you hiring?
42 sats \ 7 replies \ @BlokchainB 31 Mar 2022
Why should I use this when I already use Fold app? Feels like the same thing but in a new app
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121 sats \ 4 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
That's what it is today. --> so we had to start by offering better rewards, more brands, and a better referral program that allows you invite your friends to boost your rewards rates until we literally make nothing on you, and you earn sats every time someone else buys a card.
Next week --> we will look a little something like pay with moon + bitrefill
Next month --> we will look a little something like moon + fold + idk... something with card-linked-offers
--> banking services --> bitcoin exchange --> bitcoin rewards Visa card ------> we got a lot coming ya'll
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31 sats \ 3 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
PS: we fucking love the guys at fold (except Skeef)... Will Reeves has been so damn helpful to me over the past week alone, helping me understand the challenges we will face moving forward. So much love and respect for those guys...
.... except skeef
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
+1 to fuck skeef +1 to <3 fold
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ThrillerX_ 31 Mar 2022
lol so no appearance on Toxic Airwaves anytime soon?
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
I’ll come on to tell Skeef how I feel.
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27 sats \ 1 reply \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
You're not wrong.
You should use us because we have a bigger selection of brands and better rates on a lot of them. Also this is only phase 0.1 of what we are doing. We will be adding things like buying visa gift cards and being able to link any credit card to get sats back when shopping.
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16 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 31 Mar 2022
Let the competition begin!
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25 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 1 Apr 2022
Would it be possible to add a category to highlight giftcards that work abroad, i.e. outside of the US? Just checked a couple, and the terms state it's US/Canada only.
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin 1 Apr 2022
Also would like to know.
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5 sats \ 2 replies \ @banana 31 Mar 2022
How do you get a bear in the mood?
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022 freebie
honey?
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
NgU
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1 sat \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 31 Mar 2022
Are you part of the "Ben's Conspiracy" ? https://twitter.com/Tucson_Bitcoin/status/1508916700904783873
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
We’re all bens. We’re all a part of this.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman OP 31 Mar 2022
no comment
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @avg 3 Apr 2022
anyone having a referral code?
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