

Show HN: A non-profit certification organization for Bitcoin professionals - abstrct
https://cryptoconsortium.org

======
abstrct
We just issued a press release today to announce the Certified Bitcoin
Professional (CBP) - our first certification.
[http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/09/prweb12165371.htm](http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/09/prweb12165371.htm)

We have spent about a year working on the organization and we are really happy
with how far it has come. We have a lot more work ahead but we think the CBP
is a great start.

Please feel free to post any comments, concerns and questions. I will answer
them all to the best of my abilities.

~~~
deftnerd
Great idea. I think this is important for the Bitcoin developer space.

I see the prices, which are very reasonable, but I'm a bit surprised that
they're not in BTC. Also, are the study guides included in those prices and
are they available through you? Are there fees to retake the test if you don't
pass the first time?

I'm working on a startup that verifies information people assert about
themselves, including educational and certification achievements. Are you
planning on building a page so third parties and HR employees can enter a
certificate number to verify that it was issued to an individual?

If so, make sure the certificate numbers aren't sequentially issued so data
scraping isn't a concern.

Considering your industry focus, you should consider publishing proof of
people getting their certification on the blockchain itself

Edit: For curiosity sake, I went through the signup process. They do accept
BTC, even though the homepage has the price denominated in Canadian Dollars.
The signup process is pretty well done.

The test itself seems to be outsourced through proprofs.com

There are no links to study materials or a sample test, so I have no idea if
I'll pass the test or not. It doesn't appear that you can retest. That will
turn off a lot of potential applicants because they won't know if they're
wasting almost 0.1 BTC on a certification that might ask them something beyond
their skill set.

I'll take the test in a few minutes and let everyone know what the process is
like.

There is a place to look up a certificate, but unless I'm mistaken, you have
to create an account and log in to use that feature.

~~~
rahimnathwani
I'm curious: how will your service differ from existing providers of
background checks?

Also, regarding sequential certificate numbers, isn't that only a problem if
the certificate number is the only information required to search? Typically,
job applicants also provide their surname and the month+year during which they
attained the certification. Requiring all three of those details for search
should be good enough to prevent scraping, without needing to throttle request
frequency too much.

