Disclaimer: This is a 2017 post that I found lying around and thought of publishing it on Medium. All references points to 2017.
I recently attempted and passed the Certified Bitcoin Professional examination by CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4). This article will be a brief overview of my experience preparing for the exam and how can someone interested can go about attempting it.
Background
Although I remember reading the Genesis paper[1] for Bitcoin way back in 2011/12, I never imagined this could be just more than a revolutionary whitepaper. Hell, nobody could have imagined a single bitcoin to be of $20,000 worth of value in just 6 years. For context, it cost 10,000 bitcoins to buy 2 pizzas in 2010. Now that same 10,000 bitcoins are worth $100 million [2]). I just thought the whitepaper, ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’ was awesome since it laid out one of the first approaches of ‘automating’ trust factor via computers. And the fact that Satoshi Nakamoto's identity wasn’t revealed, made this more like a cyberpunk series to me.
Fast forward to 2017 and I met a friend who got lucky in the recent surge in the price of Bitcoin[3] (3X returns in 3 months). As much as I was baffled by the returns, I felt so stupid to not pay attention to this earlier. I then decided I will invest some of my time and money for the coming few months in Bitcoin and other stuff related to Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies.
With respect to the investment of time, I wanted to take some ‘certification’ or ‘course’ which could streamline the entire study I am planning to do. I was referred to C4’s Bitcoin Certified Professional Certification as the de-facto certification by one of my colleagues at the workplace. After further reading, I decided to commit to it.
What is it?
From C4’s website[4],
‘A Certified Bitcoin Professional is knowledgeable about the Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin transactions, and how the Bitcoin network operates. CBPs are able to apply Bitcoin technology to their professional area of expertise and understand privacy aspects, double-spending, and other issues that relate to the currency.’
Hence if you read it right, it’s ONLY about Bitcoin and no other cryptocurrency or even about blockchain in specific.
Other information:
- Duration:2 years
- Examination Fee: $99.99
- Application Fee: $34.99
- Renewal Fee: $34.99
- Number of attempts: 1 (to reattempt, you have to pay the examination fees again)
- Payment Structure: The fees above are to be paid in sequence. So in order to give the examination, you only have to pay the Examination Fee of $99.99. Only if you pass, would you have to pay the Application Fee of $34.99. And of course after two years, if you wish to renew, it’s $34.99 again.
- All fees payment are in bitcoins ONLY.
- Exam structure: 75 MCQ in 20 minutes (no time to Google, seriously no time)
- Passing Criteria: 70%
Why did I take it?
With every new technology, there is an important pillar of ‘education’ which gets created by default. As the tech grows, so is the need for people who know this technology evolves. Blockchain is here to stay, and so is Bitcoin (doubtful but yeah). If you see[5], there are dozen certification programs on Bitcoin available on Google. My reason for selecting this one in particular was:
- Recommendation from a very qualified industry leader friend who works with banks on Blockchain technologies.
- Chaired and supported by top names in the Bitcoin community.
- It’s comparatively cheaper (99.99$ + 34.99$ as of writing this article). All payments must be in bitcoins. I assume the fees would increase with time and the popularity of Bitcoin.
- I had my Christmas+New year holiday and some bitcoins with me, so why not!
- If (and only if) C4 indeed becomes a de-facto standard for Bitcoin certification, all certified professionals would have a first-mover advantage.
The Preparation:
The C4 website (https://cryptoconsortium.org/certifications/CBP) has all details of the topics which would be covered/asked in the examination. Beware that if you look at these topics without any context, you might think this would take years to just study. In reality, it won’t and all you need is a month of part-time reading and you should be good to go (this is assuming you know a bit about cryptography, keys, and some basic technological understanding).
(The most helpful) Study Material:
https://www.udemy.com/course/bitcoin-certification/
Apart from what is already available on C4’s website, I would highly recommend this course from Udemy. Hands down, this course by Ravinder Deol is pretty neat in terms of covering the entire certification modules step by step. The course is not in-depth and you shouldn’t expect more than just definitions, basic understanding, and cues about important concepts. But this suffices well for the examination point of view.
As for me, for every topic, I used to watch the Udemy video and then Google and read enough to know the depth of the subject (mostly because I was targeting knowing a hell lot rather than certification). Although the examination is comparatively easy (this is subjective) I would not recommend just going through the course and give the exam. Some questions are a little twisted and you would only know the answer if you understand the core concepts of Bitcoin.
If you are trading on bitcoins or any other crypto-currencies these concepts would be much clearer for you to grasp.
During the exam:
The exam consists of 75 questions (MCQ) with a time limit of 20 minutes. It’s not really possible to google for sure (you might not be able to get through all the questions if you keep switching tabs). Plus, questions are not google-able.
You can navigate back on certain questions, but by pressing ‘back’ ‘back’ back every time. So if you are thinking of skipping a question just to revisit it later, it would be a bad idea since you have to crawl through all the pages in between before reaching that question and then crawl ahead to read your latest question. Plus you only have 20 minutes.
My result and future:
I cleared the examination (Yippee!!) and I am awaiting the certification (they send you a hard copy via post, so it would be a while for me to receive it in India).
As for what lies ahead in terms of career, I really don’t know and think about it. Blockchain is an awesome technology; I will keep studying and researching more on it!!
Reference within the articles:
[1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
