42 sats \ 8 replies \ @k00b 31 Mar 2022 \ on: We are the founders of The Bitcoin Company, Ben and Ben, AMA bitcoin
  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)?
write
preview
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.
reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 31 Mar 2022
How much time do you spend prepping for bit devs?
reply
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.
reply
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.
reply
31 sats \ 2 replies \ @ben 31 Mar 2022
  1. all ben's are fungible
reply
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
reply
21 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 31 Mar 2022
What's your favorite project that Open Sats has funded?
reply
1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Undergotten 31 Mar 2022 freebie
Thank you. Are you hiring?