Jay Addison Technical and Media Advisor for CryptoBiz Magazine interviews Michael Perklin, President of Bitcoinsultants. Michael is a cyber-security expert and founder of the world’s first Bitcoin consulting firm that specializes in security: Bitcoinsultants. Michael has a Master’s degree in Information Assurance, a Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems Security, holds CISSP and CISA certifications as well as certifications in digital forensics. Michael has conducted security audits of Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin software, and has implemented highly-secure key management solutions for companies who require more security than simple cold wallets could provide. Michael has been invited to speak about cyber security, digital forensics, and bitcoin security at conferences internationally and continues to enjoy thinking of new ways to break things so that they can be rebuilt more securely.
Transcript
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this is jay addison from crypto biz magazine we are here live at inside bitcoins in las vegas with michael perklin michael's with bitcoin sultans and c4 michael how you doing today i'm doing great how are you i'm doing great thank you very much uh what large security projects has your company being part of um a great question so um my my company bitcoin seldon has provided security services to a variety of exchanges in canada uh probably the largest uh project that we've been involved with is uh with ethereum ethereum had to raise about 30 000 bitcoins for their crowd sale yeah um so when ethereum approached us to design a highly secure bitcoin vault we knew that it had to be some serious security uh and i'm happy to say that uh the vault that we've implemented for ethereum so far not a single satoshi has gone missing uh will bitcoin ever be in a place where your average non-tech person can safely secure their coins i think so yes um now right now it's it's true that bitcoin is a little bit difficult to use but every day it's getting easier and easier to use uh and i i always compare bitcoin to email when email first came out the only real way to use email was on a command line with the pine email client but nowadays we have grandmas using ipads to send emails and photos to their to their grandchildren so much easier i i see bitcoin being much the same way yes it's a little bit difficult to use today but tomorrow or maybe another tomorrow there will be extremely easy to use solutions that uh put in the hands of grandmas everywhere fantastic so what steps do you think the average user should take to secure their coins i think one of the uh most important things to do when you're securing your own coins is to separate your coins into two stacks one that is your offline storage your cold storage and one that is your online storage this is analogous to how the majority of your money may be in your bank account but at any given time in your wallet you may only have a few bucks that you need for you know coffee or or whatever uh a very similar um approach can be applied to bitcoin uh and the majority of your coins should be stored offline using one of the many different uh cold storage technologies available today that sounds great is your current certification available worldwide c4 certifications are definitely available worldwide uh the cbp certification the certified bitcoin professional certification uh has been uh delivered to countries like the netherlands russia australia and even uh japan uh we're definitely shipping them everywhere fantastic how do you ensure that the people who sign up for the test are actually the ones taking it that's a very difficult challenge um now because the the test is available online and it's a time restrictive test we only have 20 minutes to uh to answer 75 questions um you're right that there is no easy way to determine which human is behind the keyboard at the time however what we do do is uh like all certifications when you when you apply for certification you have to upload a cv a curriculum vitae or a uh or a resume so we do a little bit of of research just to make sure that you are a real person and you're not uh trying to um i guess certify a non-human but uh unfortunately there is no uh way that anybody can prove which human is behind any keyboard at any given time how many certifications have been issued and what's the pass and fail rate for the people taking the test uh i believe i said yesterday there were about 75 certified bitcoin professionals uh and the cbx test the certified bitcoin expert test is still being uh developed so there are currently no cbx's uh at the moment the pass fail rate i i know is is fairly high on the past side um i i don't know off the top how many people have failed but uh the the vast majority who have taken the test have passed the pass rate is uh you need to score 70 or higher on the exam and because you only have 20 minutes you have no time in between the 75 questions that you're answering to google anything or to phone a friend that's right so you either know it or you don't and that's that's really what it's testing okay so how long until your next level of certification is available and what future certifications do you have planned uh the certified bitcoin expert exam should be ready by this winter um and we're working diligently with a lot of uh experts in the field to make sure that the questions that we that we put to to candidates truly do measure expert level knowledge in bitcoin um after the cbx exam is ready in the winter well we're gonna be concentrating on exams for additional cryptocurrencies such as a certified ethereum contract developer oh great and some other ones as well because these types of cryptocurrencies are different from from the other ones and they have their own set of skills uh and we're happy to be working with with ethereum staff to make sure that uh the exam that we we put forward for uh for ethereum contract developers will accurately cover all the knowledge that a contract developer needs to know to write distributed applications that's really exciting so here's the mystery question uh january 1st 2015 what do you think the price of bitcoin is going to be i know this is a horrible question to ask everybody well i think it's a great question um i work at a co-working space up in toronto called decentral and we actually made a pool uh on for that exact question on january 1st at midnight eastern time what will the price be and we even narrowed it down to be uh on which exchange are we gonna uh measure at that moment and is it uh you know the average of the day or whatever it is um i wanted more optimistic guesses on my on my team and i've guessed it's gonna be two thousand dollars wow we'll see if i'm right or wrong uh if the trend of today continues maybe yeah you know what there's not a lot of money on the line on the bed it's more of a friendly bet for bragging rights michael how do people get a hold of you if they want to hire bitcoin consultants or get c4 certification uh in order to find bitcoin sellers you can go to the website bitcoinsultans.ca uh and if you're interested in writing one of the the certified bitcoin professional examinations you can go to cryptoconsortium.org also you can find uh find us on twitter my my hat my handle is at m perkling fantastic thank you very much michael kirkland from bitcoin sultans and c4 thank you magazine live from meckler media's inside bitcoins conference in las vegas remember to subscribe to crypto biz magazine at cryptobizmag.com follow us on twitter at cryptobizmag thanks for joining us and learn more at cryptobizmagazine.com