Name: Ben Kaufman

Country: Unknown

How long have you been into Bitcoin and what got you interested?

I’ve been around since about early 2017. Heard about Bitcoin from a friend and got curious, and after I started reading about it I just couldn’t stop. The idea of a system for digital scarcity and the mechanisms of how it works seemed brilliant, so I just started dedicating a growing part of my time to learn as much as I could about it.

Best Bitcoin experience and worst Bitcoin experience?

Pretty hard to choose, I guess the best moment was going to my first Bitcoin only conference in London (Advancing Bitcoin) and hanging up with so many Bitcoiners IRL for the first time. Worst experience was having my own “boating accident” (or well, sending to the wrong address…). Luckily it was not too much, and helped me realize how careful one should be when dealing with Bitcoin.

What is something that no one knows about you that you do outside of the Bitcoin world?

I’m quite open so I might have mentioned that before, but I’ve been doing Judo for 15 years.

What is the biggest fail you have ever seen in the Bitcoin world?

Probably every attempt to take it over, whatever the Bcash and Segwit 2x which I’ve personally seen, or those that were before me like Mike Hearn’s Bitcoin XT. They all ended in the same epic fail and loss of money and credibility for those behind it.

How did you get into developing and what led you to work on Bitcoin projects?

I first started coding when I was 12 in a local kids coding class and immediately liked it. After about a year, my dad suggested the idea that I should try a professional software development course, which I took for a few months. This really gave me everything I needed to get started as a developer. So when I was 14, I left school and shortly after decided to focus on working as a software developer. I was working as a freelancer for 3 years, and naturally as I found out about Bitcoin, and as I learned more about it, I started focusing more on Bitcoin projects.

Tell us about what you are working on now?

I’ve just left my regular job, and am now starting to focus fully on Specter, which I have been contributing to in my free time for the last year. Specter is an alternative GUI for Bitcoin Core, which takes its powerful command line functionalities and provides an easy interface to use your own node, including many features such as hardware wallets use and multisig setups.

What’s it like being so young and in the trenches coding Bitcoin projects?

It’s really an amazing opportunity. It’s not easy to find something which is both meaningful and rewarding - working on Bitcoin is both. So I feel quite lucky, especially at this age, to have found my way to work on Bitcoin and help others in the space. In many industries, and although much less in software development too, being young and without “official” credentials like a college degree can be a big disadvantage. In Bitcoin it’s hardly ever the case. Nobody cares who you are, (or even what your real name is for that matter) as long as you can deliver.

Any suggestions for anyone out there wanting to get into the development side of Bitcoin?

For those with no prior coding experience, there are a lot of coding classes and bootcamps available both online and in-person. Which one specifically to take depends a lot on one’s personality, I do think today everything you need can be learnt online for free or at a very low cost, but that’s not necessarily the best for everyone. As for which programming language you should learn, I’d probably recommend Python for beginners, since it’s used by many projects (including the testing framework of Bitcoin Core), and is probably the easiest to start with. But there are no wrong answers really and no matter which language you learn, there’s some project in the space using it.

Once you know the basics, it’s just a lot of practice. The best thing is to go through projects in the Bitcoin space and just start writing code for them. Open source contributions are really the best way to learn. At first, you can even try to start by just reviewing other people's code (Pull Requests), or you can start some small project by yourself. It really doesn’t matter how small what you work on may seem, it’s most important that you just learn by practicing.

Coming from the dev side, what do you see in Bitcoin that people might miss?

I think there’s something quite humbling looking at Bitcoin from this side. After all, when you look into Bitcoin as code, you realize the incredible effort that was needed to make it work, and the even greater effort needed to maintain it. Looking at the code, and especially at the long history of bugs and vulnerabilities, you see that unlike gold, Bitcoin does not just exist, it has to be constantly maintained and reviewed. Gold can’t be teleported, but it also can’t have software bugs. Today the risk software bugs pose to Bitcoin is already incredibly small, but that’s only thanks to huge ongoing efforts of the developers, which is a fact I think is sometimes overlooked.

What is the best Bitcoin security advice you can give someone?

I think there are 3 principles for Bitcoin security which will protect you from nearly everything. The first is take it seriously. This might sound obvious, but if I had a sat for every time I heard about someone writing his seed words on a napkin and throwing it away… That’s why the first thing I recommend is to take it seriously. Securing your Bitcoin is not hard anymore, but you have to take the time and read, learn, and practice using it securely.

The second principle is to keep it simple, don’t put your Bitcoin in some complicated setup you won’t know how to get them out of. Practice first with small amounts and upgrade your security gradually as you go. The third is the simplest - beware of phishing! Don’t enter your seed words on an online computer, even if it asks you very nicely! If you are unsure, there’s a huge community of Bitcoiners out there ready to help at any moment, just reach out before doing something you might regret.

What do you think of all the US dollar money printing and how that affects Bitcoin?

I think the effect on Bitcoin should be very clear by just looking at the price chart. The USD supply keeps rapidly growing and its value depreciating. This scheme of money printing is of course unsustainable, it’ll end either with a depression, should the Fed stop the money printer, or a hyper-inflation, in case it won’t stop it on time. I’m not sure how long they will be able to continue with this, but it seems like they’re running out of tricks. But for now, I think money printing will keep accelerating and pumping up the Bitcoin price.

Why do you think some people, especially noobs gravitate to shitcoins? 

I guess there are many reasons, but probably the biggest is the notion that they have “missed” on Bitcoin going from a few cents to $50,000, but that very soon there ought to be a “next Bitcoin” which will do the same. But once you realize that digital scarcity is not reproducible, and that there just can’t be a next Bitcoin, you see why this chase after such a thing makes no sense.

What are your thoughts about NFT’s and the people pushing them?

Honestly, I see no value for NFTs, simply because it tries to use the concept of blockchain for something it cannot do - enforce ownership of something outside the blockchain. Every single Bitcoin, at its core, is pretty much just a history digital signatures and hashes, it lives on the blockchain. Anything living outside cannot be enforced on-chain, and so has no reason to be on a blockchain in the first place. I think people promoting NFTs are the same that promoted ICOs, and will be the same ones that’ll promote the next big fad. I think some honestly believe in NFTs, but I don’t see it staying very relevant for much longer.

What do you have to say to shitcoiners who claim Bitcoin will fail?

HAVE FUN STAYING POOR! But more seriously, I don’t have much to say except that they should ask themselves why it didn’t happen so far. For about a whole decade shitcoiners have tried and failed to launch the “Bitcoin killer”, they should start asking themselves why.

Who is the biggest Bitcoin sell out that deserves to be put on blast?

I think all Bitcoin sell outs get blasted eventually, no matter how rich they are, how popular they’ve been, or how long they’ve been around. Bitcoiners are quite tough on this, nobody gets a free pass on BS.

Why is it important to call out the bad actors?

It’s important mainly to protect newcomers, and to make sure to separate yourself from the scammers. You never want to be associated with scams, so when someone’s giving the “I love Bitcoin buy my shitcoin” pitch, you should call them out and make it clear that they aren’t part of the Bitcoin community. 

Who are some of the most hardcore Bitcoiners you know and why?

It’s really hard to choose, so many great Bitcoiners all around the world. The team working with me on Specter, Stepan Snigirev, Kim Neunert, and Moritz Wietersheim probably deserve here a special mention. Working with them on Specter together is really great, and they’re all pretty hardcore Bitcoiners.

Where do you think Bitcoin will go in your lifetime and why?

That’s really hard to say, but I think there’s a good chance we’ll see Bitcoin being used as money in large parts of the world in my time. It might also just stay as a medium for larger or more long term transactions, and will probably hugely grow in that sense, but I do think we will also see it taking off as a widely used medium of exchange.

How important is it for someone to run a node and what benefits does it provide?

Bitcoin consensus rules are enforced by people verifying the transactions they are willing to accept. When you don’t run your own node, you’re trusting someone else to verify and enforce the rules for you. If many people do this, we could reach a situation where a small number of service providers are verifying the majority of Bitcoin transactions. In that case, where payment verification is mostly centralized, it gets much easier for the service providers to collude and modify the consensus rules, and since they are the majority, most users won’t even know, and those who do could find themselves being forked off.

So looking at the bigger picture, not enough people using their own nodes is a risk for Bitcoin, and it’s therefore crucial as to get as many people as we can to use their own nodes. On the individual scale, using your own node has 3 notable advantages.

First, you are not exposed to the risk of a service provider feeding you false information about your Bitcoin, you don’t have to trust, you just verify.

Second is the privacy gain. When you don’t use your own node, you have to query a service provider about the specific transactions you’re interested in (or at least, lak information about blocks you’re interested in). Using your own node means that you don’t need to leak data about transactions you’re interested in to 3rd parties, you just query your own node.

Third advantage is reliability - a service provider might go down, or get shut down, at any moment. Using  your own node means you reduce your dependency on 3rd parties in order to access your funds.

What Bitcoin innovations get you the most fired up?

Personally I’m pretty excited about Taproot coming soon, especially due to its effect on multisig privacy. Besides Taproot, I think the improvements in CoinJoin protocols, like CoinSwap, are quite interesting and important.

What Bitcoin startups or companies are you most excited about?

There’re so many great projects it’s hard to choose. BTCPay is one of my favourite projects, really excited about their work, and they’re really making it so easy to accept Bitcoin payments. I’m also really excited about Bisq and HodlHodl, which make it easier to buy Bitcoin without KYC.

What are your goto Bitcoin storage options?

I think it depends a lot on the level of experience. BlueWallet is great for beginners who want to start self-custody, and Casa and Unchained Capital are also doing a good job onboarding beginners with multisig. For slightly more experienced users, I’d strongly recommend trying out Specter, which lets you use your hardware wallets and air-gapped devices with your own Bitcoin Core node. 

Any tips you want to give to people new to Bitcoin?

The best thing is to just keep it simple. Don’t “trade”, don’t try to “time the market”, don’t “diversify” with shitcoins, don’t rush with stuff you don’t really understand. Just stay safe, stack sats whenever you can, and learn as much as possible as you go.

Name some of your favorite information sources and/or podcasts in the space.

So much good content around it’s hard to name all. Stephan Livera’s Podcast and Matt, Marty’s TFTC, and John Vallis’s Bitcoin Rapid Fire are great “big” ones. There are also Fun with Bitcoin, Citizen Bitcoin, Keyvan Davani Connector, Down the rabbit hole, and many others who put out solid content. In terms of information there’s BitcoinQnA, Stephan Livera and K3tan’s Ministry of Nodes, Matt Odell’s guides, BTCSessions videos, Keep It Simple Bitcoin tutorials, and many others!