#1016 Ben Klein On Going From Public Defender To Working In Crypto

Ben Klein is the Head of Community at Shipyard Software. In this conversation, we discuss how Ben was able to change the course of his career to get a job in Crypto, why Ben decided to go work in the Crypto industry, why he enjoys his new career so much, and how you can begin to change your career today. ======================== BCB Group is the leading payment services partner for the digital assets industry. BCB Group provides payment services in 30+ currencies, FX, cryptocurrency liquidity, digital asset custody and BLINC, which is BCB’s free, instant settlements network for the BCB client ecosystem. Find out more by visiting bcbgroup.com/pomp ======================= Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 crypto browser. No extension required. Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support, and more. Download the Brave privacy browser at brave.com/Pomp, and click the wallet icon to get started. =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Ben Klein is the Head of Community at Shipyard Software. In this episode, we talk about building a community, getting a job in crypto, how exactly you can begin to learn about various aspects of the industry, and what Ben's best advice is for somebody who's trying to transition from non-crypto into the Bitcoin and crypto industry. I really enjoyed this conversation with Ben, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by FTX US. FTX.us is the safe, regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital assets.

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Click the wallet icon to get started. This episode is brought to you by BCB Group. With a dedicated focus on institutional payment services, BCB Group provides business banking, cryptocurrency and foreign exchange market liquidity for many of the world's largest crypto-engaged financial institutions. BCB business accounts allow businesses to load fiat currency and cryptocurrencies for payments, operations and trading purposes. BCB's clients can trade FX and cryptocurrencies quickly and at scale with market-leading value. BCB's Blink network is the European crypto industry's first instance settlements network and one of the first real-time payment networks of its kind to allow free, real-time transactions across fiat and digital currencies. BCB's vision is to empower the global financial revolution through sustainable and innovative banking.

• 2:53Anthony Pompliano?

  You can find out more by visiting bcbgroup.com/pomp today. Again, if you want to learn more, go to bcbgroup.com/pomp today.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Ben, I'm very excited to talk to you, my friend. How are you?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Hey, Pomp, thanks. What a pleasure to be on the show. Thanks so much.

• 3:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Dude, I'm super excited because to me, you represent everything that is possible in Bitcoin and crypto. And I have to call out, I see you with your bear market armor on here. You've got the tie ready to defeat the 2022 bear market, my friend.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  I'm glad you start there. So I actually had, you know, I was a former lawyer, so I wore a suit and tie every single day. And then when I had my first day at the new job, I almost got made fun of. So only t-shirts from then on out. And then I was clicking the link because, you know, I sent it to all my family. My mom goes, "You better look better than that guy in the sad pink t-shirt who you had on first." So I slapped on, I slapped on something a little more professional.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, this, this was like a live wardrobe change you just went through.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 4:16Anthony Pompliano?

  That's amazing.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I think it was, uh, was that Dylan or I don't know.

• 4:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Dylan, yeah, Dylan.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  So my mom made fun of him.

• 4:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Damn.

• 4:25Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Your mom was making fun of Dylan. I'll make sure he knows. Talk to me about this, this transition that you went through. You were a public defender. You say you're a lawyer. You're a public defender and now you work at Shipyard Software in the crypto space. How does that happen? Like, why are you as a public defender like, oh, maybe I should not do this anymore and I should go work in this industry?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks a lot. Well, truly, the same reason I went into crypto is the same reason I went into public defense and that's that I was called to it. When I got out of law school and there was really nothing else that I wanted to do except go protect those people who are accused of crimes. And as you know, our criminal justice system is nonsense. And then, you know, I found myself in the December run up of 2020, outside of work and outside of my kids, all I was doing was learning about Bitcoin in the larger crypto world. And after a while, it seemed like you, I had no choice, but I needed to be in the space for the same reasons I was doing public defense. You're fighting for the little people and it's nice to actually be speaking to my people

• 5:30Speaker 02

  here. People believe in it because outside of this world, you're the weird Bitcoin crypto guy. But I truly believe that this is our chance to have a radical redistribution of wealth and power. And I wanted to be at the forefront of that. So I decided I needed to get into the space and I didn't really know how to do it because I had touched my resume for eight years. And I was listening to your podcast and you shield for POMS crypto course and I applied and I got into cohort 10. Shout out to the best cohort there is. You should get the mayor of cohort 10, Tatum, on your show. And I'm happy to talk about my journey and have to talk about your course because I'm very grateful for it. And I especially want to talk about Shipyard because

• 6:13Speaker 02

  what an awesome landing place on that right now.

• 6:16Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So there's a lot here, right? We're going to run through this. When you said that you were a public defender, you want to get into the crypto industry, you end up going through the training program. Give folks like the two top takeaways in terms of what you got out of that.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  The 40,000 view, the two things are one, the actual learning that you do. And then number two is the, the job training application and resume skills. And those are

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Look, let me get, let me give you three too, because then the third, just as important is the networking. So what I say is the teaching that y'all get, and not just you, because you talk to us twice a week, I think a two-hour session, but all the coaches, Balaj, Caddy, Colton, all of them. If you remembered 20% of what they taught you, you would definitely be within the top 20% of knowledgeable people in the industry. No question about it. But other than just the learning about the substance, you know, I joined, so I got, I applied to the, to the program. It started January 10th and I get led into the Slack channel, January 6th.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  And I'm scrolling through the career sub-channel and I see a posting for Shipyard Software that literally looks like my dream position. And again, I think my resume is good because, you know, I got them good credentials, but what I learned, because I went to all of the resume workshops, all of the job interview workshops, all of the application workshops, shout out to Claire, your great coach. And I learned that the substance might have been there, but the presentation was like, you know, I'm sitting here thinking I got an A-plus resume. It's like C-minus at best. But y'all got that turned up. So I, I found out about the job in Pomp's Crypto Slack channel. And I learned how to get the job from your coaches and the networking, you know, I'm still very friendly with my cohort.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  And it has, the network has grown beyond the cohorts and I still stay in touch with the coaches. And here I am on the best business show. So it's, you know, start at the bottom, now we're here.

• 8:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Uh, all right. So now here's an interesting thing to me is you go through the program and you end up applying at Shipyard Software, but there's one issue, which is to my knowledge, you're actually a Bitcoin maximalist, but you're working at a company that isn't a Bitcoin-only company. So explain how, kind of, how does the circle and the square come together here?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  It's true. And I was, I would say I was a Bitcoin maximalist. And in terms of investment, I would say the largest percentage of my portfolio that is Aliquated towards cryptocurrency is in Bitcoin. And I actually learned from your course that you guys made the distinction of Bitcoin is money, which I believe, and everything else that really tries to be money is not going to do it as well. But all the other stuff, Ethereum, EVM, whatever tokens that come out, that's technology. And what drew me to Shipyard was not only the mission, which I do want to talk about, but the, really the brains of the technology that's there.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  I mean, the CTO of Shipyard is the, is the person who invented automated market makers. Like, we have, we have that guy on our team. And we create decentralized exchanges. But going into the mission is the CEO and CTO and everyone in Shipyard, we're trying to bring free and fair markets to everyone. And that's something I can really get behind, going back to radical redistribution of wealth and power. This is a way for little people to fight. And Shipyard backed that with their very first product, their very first decentralized exchange, is built for retail. You actually had our CEO on back in December, Mark Laurie.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  But, uh, so Shipyard, you know, it's a place where retail doesn't subsidize whales. And we do that by locking our, our liquidity pool and having the best prices, because we have the best, the best brains writing the smart contract. We actually redeployed our smart contract for Ethereum mainnet about eight weeks ago. And already, eight weeks later, we have over a billion dollars in volume. Like, not that many people can say they swapped a billion. And we're doing that, and we're doing that with the best prices for small trade. So it just feels good to be a part of it.

• 10:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think about your role as head of community, talk through a little bit of like what you do on a day-to-day basis in that role.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so let me talk not only about head of community, but also life as a startup, because I think I was hired like number 12. So even though I'm a lawyer, I was not hired because, to do legal stuff. And it becomes a part of my job because everyone has to wear a lot of hats. So I'm doing marketing, operations, um, you know, finance, community management.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  And legal, but the role that they hired me for is head of community. And that's a somewhat nebulous title because it means that all I need to get my fingers in anything where the community is going to be involved. And that could be internal community, company culture, talking about our mission and purpose and values, but that could go into hiring. But a big part of it is how we interact with our community, which becomes Clipper. Uh, so my job is to educate, entertain, and help them answer questions about kind of a wild, wild west new industry.

• 11:50Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you start to think about some of those questions, like, how do you stay on top of, uh, what is going on? How do you stay on top of, uh, the various questions that you field? And like, where do you go for answers? Is it internally, externally, a combination? Like, walk through, somebody asks you a question, you don't know the answer to, what do you do?

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's something we actually think a lot about in the community because, because it's such a new area, where to go to find, there isn't an infrastructure in place to find out where to learn. So we're trying to build that infrastructure, actually. And luckily, again, because I was a lawyer, I didn't know crypto, I came into it. My CEO hired Web three tutors for me. So they sat down and gave me three hours a week of just Web three training. It was kind of an extension of your course a little bit. But so that gave me the knowledge base. And then from there, we like to, so our CEO does, uh, podcast interviews with leaders, thought leaders in the industry.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  And then we bring those people into our Discord and do AMAs where anyone is open to ask questions. We do something called The Adventure, that's my big project. Our last one just finished. We had 23,000 people sign up for it. And the purpose of that is to send people out and educate them about the space in an entertaining way. So there's not one answer, we're building lots of ways. So it's bringing in thought leaders, it's publishing out fun quizzes, it's sending out our users out into the ecosphere. Uh, and we're still learning how to do it because it doesn't exist yet. And we want to be at the forefront of teaching people how to operate in this world safely.

• 13:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. When you start to think about, uh, kind of working in the industry, what's been the biggest surprise for you so far?

• 13:33Speaker 02

  The su- surprise is a funny word. I mean, the nicest part is the quality of life, right? You know, here I am in a suit and tie, but I don't wear that. I work from home. I get to spend so much more time with my kids. But the surprise, okay, I have an answer for you. I'm very like philosophically, idealistically, high-minded, right? So you think about Bitcoin, fix the money, fix the world, and I'm all in. And the purpose of Shipyard is bring free and fair markets to everyone. And you know, it's a really mission-driven for the people. So I'm all in on that. And then you get into the space and you realize that not everyone is like that, right? A lot of people don't look at their community like real people with lives and children,

• 14:15Speaker 02

  but they're just a sponge, a wallet to get it out of. So y- you're surprised at how much vapor there is. And I remember when I was interviewing the Shipyard, our CTO came to me and said like, just the fact that we Shipyard are a real company and actually have a product, that alone puts us at the top quartile in the industry. And then on top of that, I mean, the incredible team that's been hired behind them, like really intelligent, impressive people, gotta be in the top 10%. So the surprise is there is real stuff here I really believe in. I wouldn't leave a job that like lived, it was my purpose, was public defense, keep people out of jail. Like I wouldn't have left that for something I didn't think was equally as important.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  And there's a lot of noise and there's a lot of scammy behavior and you gotta learn to avoid it. And there's a lot, there's a messaging issue to get it out to the larger world. I think I'd said earlier, like, I'm speaking to my people now who believe in it. That's not the case out in the larger world, you know? My wife is wonderful in letting me invest and let me talk her ear off about Bitcoin. The rest of my family, they're tolerant and the rest of the world, they don't want to hear it because they hear Bitcoin, they hear crypto and they think, one, it's going to zero and two, it's a scam. So. And they're not wrong about the second part a lot of the time. So you have to learn. People don't know how to separate the wheat from the chaff, and I want to help them do that.

• 15:42Anthony Pompliano?

  When you start to think about tips for somebody to get a job, like what are the things that you would say, hey, you know, after going through the process and literally going from something that wasn't even involved in technology, literally a public defender now to shipyard. What are some of the things that you think folks should either pay attention to or be aware of in order to make it more seamless?

• 16:02Speaker 02

  I'm gonna be, I felt like such a chill here, but what I tell people is you don't want to reinvent the wheel. I did not know how to find a job and I knew I wanted to be in it. And look, the job hunt, it stinks. You gotta sell yourself all the time. It's hard to do. You gotta be ready to face like a lot of rejection. You don't even know really where to look. So I'll tell people, don't reinvent the wheel. Go to a place that's streamlined for you. And POMS Crypto Academy did that. I mean, there's a Slack channel with hashtag careers where they're like, here's a posting or your job board, the POMS crypto jobs, whatever it is. And then so you need to know what's out there, first of all. And then you need to learn, you need to learn how to market yourself.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  And that means you need to be able to talk about yourself intelligently and have a resume that's not just going to get kicked off the second they look at it. That you want to hope that it's substance over flash, but people need to be able to look at you. You need to, people need to believe that you can present well when it's time. So get help.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  So once you've not reinvented the wheel and gone to POMS Crypto course, after that, just be ready to just shoot your shot a lot. Really work hard on your resume and make sure that you tailor it towards the jobs that you want. Like, don't just pepper out anything, I'll work anything, anything, anything. I would really say find yourself a focus, know what you want, and then find that position in the industry because it's all there. This is a, it seems like this is an industry in search of talent. The jobs are there, they just need people to fill them. So don't settle. Look for what you need and what makes sense for you, and that will shine through.

• 17:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you have any public defender friends who are thinking about jumping over as well now after they saw you do it?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Well, yes, a lot of them and half of me wants them to come. But the other half of me, I mean, I'm still dealing with the guilt of not being a public defender because I love my new job. But I love it. There's no question about it.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  But the service of walking up to the tyranny of the government and saying, "You want to throw that guy in jail, you gotta go through me." That's an important service, and I can't have the best and brightest leaving my office and coming into crypto. I had to be the one that snaked out fastest and take the goods. But, you know, we can't have community collapsing on all ends. They gotta hold it down there, and I'll hold it down in the criminal justice world, and I'll keep the world from collapsing in the crypto world.

• 18:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I know that you care a lot about this, so I figured, maybe if you could just spend the last two minutes, how screwed up is the justice system? And like, as you did that job, like, what should people know about the life of a public defender and the stuff that you deal with?

• 18:48Speaker 02

  I appreciate you giving me the time to talk about it. What I would tell people is that go to your court and watch. Go watch your fellow citizens, the people of your county, and see really who's coming in through the doors, and see who's going out in the back in shackles. Just see what our government, our state, our police, our district attorneys are doing to our people. And of course, people hear "public defender," they hear "defense," they're like, "Are you pro-crime?" Of course not. The state has the power and the obligation to keep their community safe. But with the power to accuse comes the obligation to prove.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  And I can tell you without question, 50% minimum of the cases that come through that door are total nonsense. And you know what? If you pick up a charge, it's great that you're innocent until proven guilty. But if you get cash bond put on you, you get thrown in jail, and you can't make it to your day job, so you lose your job, and then you can't pay rent, you get kicked out of your house because of a nonsense charge that some police officer wants to put on you for whatever reason, it's hard. It's hard on those family members. And I'll tell you what, our criminal justice system is pointed to those people that, you know, they're at the bottom of the economic well, if you will.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  So it's pointed not at everyone. The people that have it the hardest get hit the hardest, so it feels good to be able to protect them. And things are tough, and I don't necessarily know that it's getting better. I hope that it does, but... Look, it's hard out there. We got a lot of people locked up in jail for a lot of pretty nonsense reasons.

• 20:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it um, it's very sad, uh, you know, in terms of it, but I love your idea of go sit, literally go sit and watch, see what uh, uh, see what happens. And uh, I'm assuming it's open to everyone. Anyone can go sit in the courtroom and, and just watch, uh, and see if you, uh, you, you think it's a good situation or a bad situation. It's a pretty unique, uh, uh, way of just saying, don't, don't trust me. Go watch for yourself and see what you think.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Do your own research, if you will.

• 21:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, exactly. Um, where, where can we send people to learn, uh, more about Shipyard or find you on the internet?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  So the best thing to do is go to, uh, Clipper underscore Dex. That is our, so as I said, Shipyard Software, designs, uh, decentralized exchanges, tailor decentralized exchanges. Our first Dex is Clipper, which is marketed towards retail traders. Uh, and so go to our Discord. So if you go to Clipper dot exchange and then you go to the community tab, you can join the Discord and that's where you'll be able to find me. And let me, if you'll just give me a second to brag about Clipper, because you know, in a down market, everything looks bad, but actually because in down markets, there's a renewed emphasis on quality.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  You know, Clipper is really starting to shine because bear markets spell the end of Ponzi yield farming with inflated tokens, but people care about fundamentals and Clipper shines. We're doing $11 million in annualized revenue for our, for our liquidity providers. And that's 15 million, that's only on 15 million liquidity, which is 70% APR. That's five times what Uniswap does. So we don't care about the vanity metrics like total value lock. We care about, you know, capital efficiency and working for our consumers. So come check out Clipper. We really do have the best prices. You won't be, you won't be disappointed and we got, I think, a pretty cool team behind it. So check us out.

• 22:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it, man. Ben, thank you so much for coming on. Uh, this is fantastic. Uh, I love your energy. I love that you literally, from public defender to, uh, to working in the industry, uh, and, uh, just keep, uh, keep doing what you're doing. Uh, there's a lot of people who, uh, are, are enjoying it and we'll definitely do it again sometime soon.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  I believe it. Thanks to your coaches. Thanks to your course. I really mean that, man. Like, yo, it got me a job and I'm super happy. So thanks a lot.

• 22:54Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Sounds good, buddy. You're welcome. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.