Rob Paone, a.k.a. Crypto Bobby: How To Enter The Crypto Industry

Rob Paone, a.k.a. Crypto Bobby, is the Proof of Talent and the host of the popular YouTube channel "Crypto Bobby." In this conversation, and Anthony Pompliano discuss recruiting in the cryptocurrency industry, the Dos and Donts of the interview process, and how engineers, business development executives, management, data analysts, and marketers can enter the crypto industry. BLOCKFI-----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. CRYPTO. COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine. Visitcoinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world. ETORO-----This episode of Off the Chain is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join 11 million other traders and create an account at etoro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way.

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

• 0:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Rob Paone, aka Crypto Bobby, is the founder of Proof of Talent and also host of the popular YouTube channel Crypto Bobby. In this conversation, we talked recruiting in the cryptocurrency industry, the do's and don'ts of the interview process, and how engineers, business development executives, management, data analysts, and marketers can enter the cryptocurrency industry. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. Skrt skrt! Wanna know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right, Crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal: motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet.

• 0:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. Everything you could want at Crypto.com. Go help your boy out, tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit Crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi. All you gotta do is go to CoinMine.com, you buy a coin mine. It's like an Xbox or a Playstation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right, you purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep, you pull it out of the box, you plug it in, connect to your wifi, five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide, and then you receive

• 1:42Anthony Pompliano?

  over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kinda like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software. Just you're updating your coin mine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right, go to CoinMine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later. As many of you know, crypto investors store their digital assets on exchanges or in cold storage for long-term safekeeping. However, this strategy doesn't help them grow their investment holdings or build overall wealth.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  With the new BlockFi interest account, users can now securely store their Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest, paid monthly in cryptocurrency. 6% is an absurdly high rate. It's the best rate in the industry. I highly suggest you go check out blockfi.com/pomp. Again, that's blockfi.com/pomp to sign up and start earning crypto today.

• 2:34Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:17Anthony Pompliano?

  on iPhone, Android, or any web browser. You can get started today in just a few clicks at etoro.com. Again, that's etoro.com. Get VIP access to Bitcoin and crypto markets today.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:54Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got a special treat. The one, the only Crypto Bobby, AKA Real Name Rob, but Crypto Bobby, thanks for coming to do this. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the time. Absolutely. We've got the live stream going. People are being obnoxious, as usual. I think that we just saw "I love you" a couple of times, but we'll have fun with this. Background. What did you do before you became Crypto Bobby?

• 4:24Speaker 02

  A couple of different things. So I, my first job out of college was in IT recruiting. So I did IT recruiting in Washington DC for a few years. That's actually where I found Bitcoin. A buddy of mine sent me an article that was in December 2013, like the, one of the big, kind of original, like Bitcoin bubbles. And the article was, I think it was a Verge article, and it was like, Bitcoin is so 2013, Dogecoin is 2014. And I was like, what is Dogecoin? What's Bitcoin? And naturally, the first thing I did that night when I went home was I read more about it and found out that you could use your computer to earn

• 5:10Speaker 02

  free magic internet money. So I went ahead and watched the YouTube video and started mining Dogecoin that night. And then, uh, what a legend. My, since my first, first job out of college, I didn't exactly have a ton of money. So I also did what any entrepreneurial young chap would do is I signed up for a bunch of free credits for Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services and all the cloud providers and started mining Dogecoin and then Bitcoin through that as well. So did that, ended up moving into, ended up moving into software sales. Worked at Oracle and LinkedIn for about five years or so and kind of made my way into crypto after that.

• 5:53Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So you were taking the free credits and trial, like services from AWS and Microsoft Azure? And you were using that to mine crypto?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 6:05Anthony Pompliano?

  That's pretty smart, actually.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  I, I mean, it was like a hundred dollars of free credits and I was probably making, God knows, not much money at all. But it, it felt like a smart idea at the time. Probably was a huge waste of my time. But it was something where I was just kind of getting familiar with it and I was in the process of. Getting a master's degree in information systems at the time and the process of creating these different servers that I was running and feeling like I was doing something interesting and technical was kind of appealing to me. So I went through that and then I ended up buying the little, for a while you could actually mine Bitcoin with these little USB mining ASICs. So I bought a bunch of those and just had those running. I had a desktop computer at

• 6:49Speaker 02

  my office. So I had those running 24/7 in my desktop computer with a little fan that was blowing on at all times because otherwise they would basically melt your computer. So that was kind of like how I ended up getting into it. It wasn't necessarily like I really understood the finance elements or the economics elements behind Bitcoin or not necessarily Dogecoin. Dogecoin was fun for a while, but I didn't necessarily understand those components as much as I was really interested by the fact that you could like basically print money from your computer, which as a 23-year-old kid, I was like, oh, this is kind of appealing. So I kind of dove in that way.

• 7:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. How do you go from essentially beg, borrowing, stealing computing power to mine crypto to the infamous crypto Bobby? Like what occurs between mining Bitcoin and Dogecoin to having, how many subscribers on YouTube?

• 7:50Speaker 02

  It's like 130,000, something like that.

• 7:52Anthony Pompliano?

  You've got 100-plus thousand subscribers on YouTube and you started out using free credits on AWS. Like what's the transition there?

• 8:00Speaker 02

  So, I mean, it became pretty unprofitable to do anything like the free credits. I probably did that four or five times. So it wasn't necessarily like I was paying rent with that. I probably made a hundred bucks maybe. But even the mining with the Bitcoin ASICs became pretty unprofitable pretty quickly. So I just kind of stopped that and would kind of dollar cost average into Bitcoin on occasion and really just focused on my day job, which was recruiting and then software sales for about five years up until 2017 and

• 8:34Speaker 02

  I was working a job in enterprise software sales at Oracle. I sold ERP software, which is accounting software.

• 8:41Anthony Pompliano?

  That sounds super stimulating.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I sold that to financial services firms in New York City. So it was really exciting. Paid well. But yeah, so I did that for a while and I actually worked from home for the most part. So there was a specific day, it was like August of 2017, I made a video. There wasn't a ton of content about crypto at the time, or a ton of content that I loved. There were a lot of people talking about crazy things and talking about Bitconnect and just the YouTube game was kind of Wild West back then. And I wanted to just kind of put my thoughts together on what, I felt like I had a different spin to say. And I put the first video out there, got like 50 views, the second one got like 500 and the third one got something like 5,000.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  I was like, this is an interesting growth pattern and maybe I should continue to do this. And so for like six or seven months, I made a video on YouTube, basically every single day, sometimes twice a day. And that kind of just took off and was a pretty crazy ride.

• 9:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What were the videos about?

• 9:48Speaker 02

  So the videos were about everything from like daily price movements in Bitcoin to Ethereum to what altcoins were doing and just different like trends that I saw. And I tried to be not too high level at all because I'm not necessarily the most technical person. Or I feel like I know more than a lot of people, but I'm definitely not in that like upper 2% as far as knowledge. So I definitely wanted to be in a position where I wasn't just kind of like a relatable individual when talking about crypto. And I think kind of what, something that was fun for me and also just helped the channel grow a lot was I did these like crypto happy hours,

• 10:32Speaker 02

  which were kind of like this, but it would be nine o'clock at night and I'd have three beers and sit on a live stream and just interact and answer questions and kind of listen to what people had to say and talk to them about things. So.

• 10:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And with 100 plus thousand subscribers, when you do that, like how many people are on it at any time? A couple hundred?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  So it, right now, it's probably like three, two to 400. In the peak of the bull run.

• 10:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what's going on in the bull run?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  That was, that was the most wild. There was one time I was a. Sitting in, you know, sitting in my like office at home, uh, recording a, a live stream. And there were 4,000 people on the live stream and I was just sitting there, uh, with the, with a couple beers in me, just like, what, what is, there are 4,000 people that are watching this. And here I am like the next morning, waking up at eight o'clock in the morning to have a discovery call about accounting software. And there's 4,000 people that are watching this and I was, it was like mind blowing.

• 11:30Anthony Pompliano?

  That, that's like a small stadium. Like, like literally, it's like you're like a stand-up comedian and, and you made it. You're, you're performing in front of 4,000 people, right?

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't last long because it's, uh, it's totally correlated with the crypto markets. But, uh, yeah, it was, it was a wild, wild time.

• 11:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And, and so, uh, you go, e- explain the crypto happy hours. Like you're, you're streaming live, you're drinking, right? Not getting drunk, but just, you know, you're having a beer or two. Uh, what does everybody else do? And was the idea that they're going to be drinking as well while watching the live stream?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  It was just kind of like whatever people want to be doing. Like I, I typically, the majority of my audience would be US-based. So I would do it, let's say sometimes seven, eight, nine, basically after I was done with work. Um, I would log in and then, yeah, I would, you know, ask people like, like how you ask people on your stream. Hey, where are you watching in from? I would say, where are you watching in from and what are you drinking? And it would be, you know, everything from like crazy IPAs to Bud Light, to, to vodka on the rock, whatever it might be. So that was always kind of a, just a fun way to, to interact with people. And then we'd just answer questions. I mean, a lot of times it would be like, what do you think about XYZ? Should I invest in this? Should I put all my money in that?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  And a lot of times I have, I mean, I, I have no idea, but I would just kind of try to provide some type of rational thought process. Whether or not that ended up working out in the long run, who knows?

• 12:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. I love it. Um, all right. So what are you doing now? No longer selling accounting software.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  So when I was, when I was doing the YouTube channel or like doing a ton of that, which I still do now, but I was like really interested in the crypto industry, really interested in Bitcoin, Ethereum, a lot of the other things, and really wanted to work full-time in the space. And for me, I had difficulty doing that because I have a software sales background. Like my, my job was to generate revenue for companies, or my job was to generate revenue for Oracle. I had a, you know, whatever, a million dollar, million dollar plus quota. And my job would be to close software as a service deals. And that was difficult when I would be looking in the crypto space because there wasn't necessarily

• 13:43Speaker 02

  a lot of companies that were A, bringing in revenue, or B, the types of companies that were bringing in revenue were mostly cryptocurrency exchanges where they're looking for somebody with a Wall Street institutional finance sales background, which I just don't have. So it was really tough for me. So what I was eventually doing at that point in time was I would apply to different jobs. I would just hear nothing back. And a lot of people would reach out to me about interviews on the podcast. And eventually what I started to look at was, okay, if somebody's reaching out to me about an interview, I am going to check their, check the company. If I know of the company, I'll check their website and I'll look at it and say, oh, wow, they actually have a job opening. So I'd reply back to their interview and say, hey, you know what? Love to have you on my podcast.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  By the way, I saw you had a business development role. Would love to talk to you about that as well. And that was something that eventually kind of got my foot in the door a little bit. And I interviewed with a company that you've talked to, Oved Fluidity Air Swap. So I actually interviewed Oved on my YouTube channel and I was talking to him before the interview and he's like, what's your end game? What are you trying to do? It's like, well, I'd love to work full-time in the industry. And he's like, come in on Sunday, came into the office on a weekend, met with the team two weeks later, made the jump and left, left Oracle to work in the crypto industry full-time.

• 15:03Anthony Pompliano?

  How freeing was it to shed the man and enter into the world where people are freaking? Half crazy and frankly, half overly ambitious.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  It was, it was, it was really interesting. I mean, I, I actually really liked software sales. If I, if like the Bitcoin industry as a whole wouldn't come around, I feel like I'd still be doing that for sure. Um, I think that's a great job for anybody that's, that's ever interested in that. It's awesome. But it was really interesting on my end because when you just make content, I kind of felt like an outsider looking in on the industry. I was like, okay, I'm making content. I'm talking about this stuff, but I don't necessarily know exactly what's going on in the inside. Um, you know, there's not necessarily a ton of respect in the, in the world for, uh, you know, YouTubers amongst the, uh, the like established leaders of the industry. So I was just looking to do something where I had an opportunity to actually participate in what was going on

• 15:59Speaker 02

  within the industry, try to build things, try to learn things as much as possible. And it was, it was really awesome to be able to go into an office every day and just like be able to work with like-minded people who were passionate about Bitcoin, passionate about Ethereum, were like really interested in seeing the, the industry grow. So that was, that was my favorite part about it.

• 16:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And you go from that to starting a business in the space. Talk a little bit about what you're doing now and kind of what the, the genesis for, for starting Proof of Talent was.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Sure. So in, in 2019, uh, I was, you know, still at, at fluidity and started to think a little bit just in the, in the back of my head about like what like the long-term game in the industry, uh, for me, my, excuse me, might be.

• 16:43Anthony Pompliano?

  We're, we're going so fast, we need some water.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  So, so thinking about that a little bit more in depth.

• 16:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Is this, is this like crypto happy hour, like in the morning?

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that spiked coffee?

• 16:56Speaker 02

  If you, if you have booze, um, that'd be great. No.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's Friday, right? It's, it's never too early on a Friday.

• 17:02Anthony Pompliano?

  People on the live stream think you need milk.

• 17:05Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know why, but that's what they're saying.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Water for the buffalo chicken cake. Thank you. I appreciate that.

• 17:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, we're going to get to the jets and the buffalo chicken in a minute. Keep going.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Don't do the jets for me, please.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  So I was just thinking a little bit about like long term, where I could add the most value in the industry and had the, at the time, what I thought was kind of a crazy idea to start a recruiting firm. And I did a bunch of research. I was, I was driving up to Boston one day and kind of had the idea that popped in my head. And I was like, you know what? This actually seems like something that's not that crazy. And I did a bunch of research and didn't necessarily find anybody that I thought was um, kind of meeting the specific needs of, of the market. And then I started to reach out to different people that work in crypto and run companies. So I started to reach out to different CEOs. And I was just like, hey, I have a quick question for you. You know, people that I knew, people that I was friends with, I was like, you know,

• 17:58Speaker 02

  what do you do for recruiting? How do you handle hiring? Um, what are your thoughts? Um, do you see a demand? And basically every time there was just a conversation about like some of the business challenges. When I was trying to do some market research, almost every single CEO was like, hiring is a huge problem for us. It's a really big issue. Um, and we're just not able to hire fast enough. So uh, just kind of put a bunch of wheels into place and ended up uh, ended up deciding to, to leave full time with Fluidity to start uh, Proof of Talent, which is a technical recruiting firm that works exclusively with companies in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.

• 18:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Um, there's a lot to unpack here because uh, one, I definitely agree that there is a ton of people who want to hire.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:44Anthony Pompliano?

  But uh, they're struggling. Um, maybe let's start on that side with the companies.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 18:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Like what are you seeing? Or you're sitting in the kind of the middle of that marketplace. So you talk to employers every day. You talk to uh, people who are in the industry looking to switch jobs. And then also people outside the industry looking to get into the industry. On the employer side, like what are some of the trends you see and some of the challenges that they're facing?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Sure. So yeah, I think you summarized it well. I mean, uh, basically.

• 19:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I practiced. Last night I stayed up late to practice that one little speech.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  So Proof of Talent is pretty much like a, it's basically a matchmaker between companies that are hiring and, and talent. Uh, and so for the companies that are hiring, I think you've seen and have an interesting, just like with the industry, how things have changed since 2017. There's definitely a somewhat of like a unique perception where I feel like things have.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  The outside interest is maybe pared back a little bit, but it's definitely been a lot more legitimized over time. I think every day that Bitcoin continues to exist and continues to succeed, that the just kind of legitimacy for the industry continues to grow. And you're starting to see companies that are, I think, finding different and new, unique use cases. And that's where I think, like for me, the majority of the companies that I work with are trying to fill those gaps. I think previously, you know, what you've seen is like the only successful companies have been the basically exchanges. For the most part, like the companies that have done really well have been cryptocurrency exchanges.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  And in 2016, 2017, you had a lot of token sales and ICOs with these lofty goals. And for the most part, the vast majority of them have not panned out. And with that, you have this kind of new emerging class of business that is mostly like a venture backed, you know, a venture backed company that's building some type of infrastructure or service within the cryptocurrency world, whether that is research or data or like APIs around exchange. There's a lot of different nice niches and unique components that businesses are kind of going after outside of just the exchanges.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  And that is one of the areas where I think people have have to kind of prove their ability to succeed because you have these companies that everybody is building the next big thing. But kind of proving that you're able to is really important when trying to attract that that next like generation of talent.

• 21:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So the employer side is obviously the businesses are going to do what they're going to do. We already have people asking in the live stream, things like college grad with programming, smart contract experience, how can I expose myself to crypto dev positions?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 21:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's flip around to the other side of the market. Whether somebody's been in the industry or not, what are you seeing from people who want to fill these jobs? From a trend perspective?

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Sure. So like if you're looking at talent.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  What I typically see, especially in the technical side, primarily Proof of Talent is a technical recruiting firm. So about 70% of the positions we work on are some type of software engineering role. The other 30% might be like a smattering of business, operations, legal. But for the majority, it's engineering type roles or development type roles. And for the most part, companies are really looking and interested in people that have experience with like core technology outside of the blockchain or cryptocurrency world. You know, whether that might be like a backend engineer that has experience with Java or C++ at a startup or a larger tech company or a frontend engineer that's worked with JavaScript

• 22:32Speaker 02

  and React for a few years. There's not necessarily as much of a demand for, that I'm seeing right now at least, there's not as much of a demand right now for somebody that has, let's say, experience specifically working on Bitcoin or specifically working with solidity in Web3. There are opportunities like that, but I, for the most part, see that companies are more strict on finding individuals that have core technology experience and less strict with somebody having blockchain experience going into it from day one.

• 23:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then, let's get into a little bit of like advice for people, right? So what are some of the do's and don'ts? Let's start with the don'ts, right? So there's a bunch of people who, they want to get jobs and they either shotgun out to a bunch of companies, they come to you, whatever. What are the big mistakes that they're making that they shouldn't do anymore?

• 23:27Speaker 02

  So I think that, and coming from somebody that has been in this situation, like I said before, you know, when I was at Oracle, I was sending out resumes and I was basically hearing nothing back. I wasn't the perfect fit for the positions on paper, but I still felt like I had something to offer. And I think a lot of people feel like they're in that scenario where, you know, they don't feel like they're necessarily, like, they look at the job description, they know, you know what, hey, I don't have everything, but I think I can add value. And what I would say on that end is that, for the most part, the crypto industry is still small enough where personal connections, I think, really make a big, you know, big difference. And so if you are somebody that, I think networking is like a huge, huge thing to be like successful within.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  To be successful within the job search is going to, if you're in a large city, going to different crypto meetups and trying to meet people there. Or even like Twitter and Telegram are still, I think hugely important and helpful. Like you can be in any location in the world and you could still interact with people on a consistent basis. So I think building up a network as much as possible and trying to get warm introductions is something that's helpful, especially for people that aren't maybe the best fit for specific roles, at least on paper.

• 24:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Skrt skrt. Wanna know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right, Crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal: motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. Everything you could want at Crypto.com. Go help your boy out, tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit Crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi. All you gotta do is go to CoinMine.com, you buy a coin mine.

• 25:25Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like an Xbox or a Playstation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right. You purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep, you pull it out of the box, you plug it in, connect to your wifi, five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide, and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kinda like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software. Just your update in your coin mine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right, go to CoinMine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later. One more word from our sponsor, BlockFi. Their new interest account allows you to securely deposit your Bitcoin or Ether at

• 26:07Anthony Pompliano?

  BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency. This rate actually compounds, so you receive a 6.2% APY, which is very attractive given the alternatives. So you can actually take your Bitcoin, you can deposit it with BlockFi, and get paid an interest rate of 6% in return. Go check out BlockFi.com/Pomp, again, BlockFi.com/Pomp, to sign up and start earning interest on your crypto today.

• 26:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and you and I were talking before we started recording. It's almost like this idea of like giving value before you try to capitalize on it. Maybe explain a little bit of that.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Sure. So, one thing that I think is really important for people that are not within, they're not working in the crypto industry right now or in the blockchain industry. Maybe you're a college, you could be in college, you could be a college grad. You could have whatever 10 years of experience on Wall Street, doesn't necessarily matter. I think that proving your actual interest within the industry is really important. And there's a couple of different ways that you can do that. And why I say this is because a lot of people, when you're having, I have conversations with job candidates multiple times a day. And there's a lot of times where you speak to somebody and they'll say, "Hey, I'm really interested in Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever it is."

• 27:29Speaker 02

  And then I'll ask, "Is there anything that you have that I can show to somebody that can, you know, we can use that to prove your interest?" And for the most part, there's not. There are a few people, and I've seen these people have a ton of success, where if it's somebody that's non-technical, they're an analyst or a researcher, or they're just, they're working in some type of business role, they write their thoughts down on Medium. Maybe they only have two articles, but it goes to show like, "Hey, I've given actual thought to this industry and I've tried to, you know, put some time and effort into what I'm doing and I'm interested." Even if I'm working a full-time job doing something completely different. On the other end of the spectrum, if you're a software engineer, one of the easiest things that you can do is find a project that you're passionate about and contribute.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  I mean, the entire, basically the entire industry is built on an open source ethos. So if you find something that you like, contribute a little bit, put in a, you know, put a little bit of effort in and just build up your GitHub profile a little bit. And I think that will go a long way as far as just ultimately showing that you do care about this, more than just saying, "I do."

• 28:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It's almost like do the job before you get the job.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And I like your example of like the researcher, because the technical one, I think it's very obvious, right? Oh, you're interested in the space, build something, right? And then you can show people, "This is what I built." And they either like it or they don't, they figure out, can they work with you or not? The non-technical positions though, a researcher, an analyst. It's so simple, right? Just literally right. The ones that are probably harder, and I want to hear your thoughts on are like folks like business development,

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 29:04Anthony Pompliano?

  or marketing. How do you think about what they can do before they actually go in to apply for a job to kind of show value or prove their worth, if you will?

• 29:13Speaker 02

  In some cases, it might be doing something that's a side project in addition to your full-time job. You know, if you're working in marketing and you want to maybe help somebody out for five hours a week on the side, that could be something that's interesting. There are, or if you're in sales, maybe trying to help somebody on the side. There are a couple of different, like Messari has their analyst program. And I've talked to a bunch of different people that they might be working in, they might be looking for a research job. Maybe they don't, they're not looking for that at all. But by participating in that analyst program, it's basically like a free volunteer program that they're doing. But it's kind of a resume builder and that's like what they're looking at. That's what they're looking at it as. And it could be somebody that's working in operations

• 29:55Speaker 02

  or sales trading on Wall Street. It doesn't necessarily matter, but that type of just like helping and kind of being involved within the industry is really important for a lot of people.

• 30:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. We've got people in the comments. Ah, Catherine Cooley, CEO of Binance US, saying, "I am hiring, looking for active folks who successfully drove results at scale. Versatility is key." Perfect example of somebody who's saying, "Look, we're hiring and we're looking for people who can drive results and who actually have skills, but it's not necessarily you had to do it in the crypto industry, etc., right?"

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think too, like when you, just job searching in general, and when you're applying for opportunities, it's, you know, you're trying to make yourself the most attractive candidate possible. There are going to be, you're not going to be the only applicant for these opportunities and you want to put yourself in a position where your background, your resume is the most appealing and not necessarily just like your resume. I think that's somewhat like. A little bit like outdated in general, but like your, your experience, your background, what you bring to the table is the most appealing thing to somebody else. And ultimately you have to sell yourself to the company. They have to sell yourself, they have to sell them to you as well because hopefully you'll have multiple opportunities that you can choose from. But that's something that, you know, you want to always try to put like the best package forward for a company to look at.

• 31:17Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. All right, we'll come back to hiring in a second, but I gotta, I gotta ask two questions. One, you're a fanatic when it comes to buffalo chicken. What, uh, what's going on with that? I've never had a buffalo chicken sandwich. Is that bad?

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Yes. That's, uh, that's, that's, that's terrible. I'll have to, have to buy one for you.

• 31:37Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, what was the fascination?

• 31:40Speaker 02

  All right, so it was, it was kind of a running joke in like mid to late 2017 when I started Crypto Bobby on Twitter and on YouTube. Um, you know, there would be times where I'd go and I'd get like a buffalo chicken for lunch and for whatever dumb reason I would post it on, on Twitter. And then like 30 minutes later, the price of Ethereum would be up 50% or the price of Bitcoin would be up 30%. And I'd be like, I need to eat more buffalo chicken wraps. And it just kind of like turned into this running joke and I also could eat like a buffalo chicken wrap like three times a day. Unfortunately, I haven't found any like super great ones in New York City, so I'm still, still struggling for that, but, uh, yeah, it just, it, it rolled.

• 32:22Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, so we're going to go from something you love, which by the way McDonald's, if they had a buffalo chicken wrap would be even better, but McDonald's is the best restaurant.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm a big Mickey D's fan. I'm a Mickey D's stockholder, so I, I hope it, hope it goes on forever.

• 32:37Anthony Pompliano?

  That's what my brother, my brother, uh, has a little bit of McDonald's stock and whenever we go somewhere outside the United States.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Pays a nice dividend.

• 32:44Anthony Pompliano?

  We literally go to McDonald's and he's like, oh, I'm checking on my investment.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  I, there's, there've been a few times where I was in, I think it was like Dubai, Malta, a couple of other like ran international places for crypto conferences. Uh, Prague, and every time I go in, I get a Big Mac.

• 33:00Anthony Pompliano?

  You got it.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, why not?

• 33:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm, I'm personally a McChicken fan though.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  A Big Mac guy.

• 33:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Nah, I gotta go with McChicken. Alright, we gotta talk about a serious, uh, topic now. What the fuck is going on with the New York Jets?

• 33:14Speaker 02

  I'm a, I'm a diehard New York Jets fan. I actually.

• 33:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Why? Uh. Do you enjoy pain?

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, at this point in time, no, but yes.

• 33:23Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way, as a New York Giants fan, like I feel for you, right? But go ahead.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  So my dad was a Jets fan, so I naturally I became a Jets fan. It's funny because I actually got a, a cold, I went to the first game of the season. And I got a cold call from, uh, the season ticket office yesterday, and then I got an email and I did respond, but, uh, I was just kind of laughing in my head, like if there's, if there's any worse sales drop on the planet right now than selling Jets season tickets, I don't know what it is. But I, I'm a huge Jets fan. I'm a diehard Jets fan. They're like, the fact that the season is basically over two weeks in is the most, I was so pumped. Went to the first Jets game, tailgated, super pumped.

• 34:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What was the score?

• 34:03Speaker 02

  It was 16, nothing, and they blew a 16-0 lead, lost 17-16, and, uh, because of two missed field goals. And then our starting quarterback, who is, I think gonna be, I think Sam Darnold's gonna be awesome, but gets mono and is out for at least a month. And I don't, I haven't heard of, uh, anybody above like 15 years old getting mono since I, never. So that's just the, that's the Jets luck is your starting quarterback gets mono, your backup quarterback breaks his ankle, and now you're on some third string. So there we are.

• 34:32Anthony Pompliano?

  If it makes you feel better going into the season for the New York Giants, Eli Manning, you know, when is he gonna turn it over? We're in week three and he's already benched? So, so that tells you how the Giants season's going.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  They're, they might be the only team worse than the Jets, so we can. You have a super role in your lifetime. I'll never have that.

• 34:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that is true. We have two of them, actually. Beat the Patriots.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Oh, thank God.

• 34:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, so, other than football and chicken wraps, where can people go if they're looking for jobs in the space, right? With Proof of Talent, in terms of what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? And where can they go?

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Sure. So with Proof of Talent, I'm really trying to build a company that people, on the job-seeking side, really think of as a place to go and reach out to us when they are looking for opportunities. Whether they're looking within the space, they're already working at a company in the crypto industry, or if they're looking from outside, they're trying to make their way in. So really trying to serve as a point of contact for individuals on that end. And also for companies, looking for companies that are hiring that need assistance with technical talent or non-technical talent. A place that they know and that they can trust to help them find that talent. As far as companies and individuals reaching out,

• 35:51Speaker 02

  proofoftalent.co is our website. There are a number of job opportunities you can see there. You could send in your resume, a bunch of different things. And also, if you're looking for different positions, you could certainly reach out as well. And then on Twitter, my DMs are open, which-

• 36:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Slide in the DMs.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Is something, I had closed DMs forever, and once I started the new business, I was like, you know what, I gotta open them, and that's been, it's been an interesting experience.

• 36:17Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the craziest thing and the most valuable thing that you've been DM'd?

• 36:22Speaker 02

  The level of, like, C-level executives at large companies that will come into, or just send you a message via Twitter or on Telegram, it's pretty incredible. I think people like, I post a lot about the job opportunities on Twitter, and people are like, "You're never gonna find that position on Twitter." And then I have a 20-year lawyer with experience working at some massive financial firm in the SEC that sends me a message, and he's like, "Hey, I'm looking for a job in crypto. I run a lightning note, and I'm really passionate about this stuff." It's like, "Oh, you can't find this type of thing on Twitter?"

• 36:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Twitter's the new LinkedIn.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. I still utilize LinkedIn, and I think that's-

• 37:05Speaker 02

  It's helpful, but the organic conversations that you have on Twitter are, I think, a lot more, at least for me, just because that's like where I have the most audience and that I've built up the most relationships. There's definitely more of a kind of an organic feel, I feel like.

• 37:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What is the Twitter account and what's the YouTube account?

• 37:27Speaker 02

  So...

• 37:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm never gonna think of you as not Crypto Bobby.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  So on Twitter, I'm @crypto_bobby. There's also @proofoftalent if you want to reach out about any job opportunities. You can certainly do that there. And on YouTube, it's just Crypto Bobby if you search it in.

• 37:43Anthony Pompliano?

  No underscore?

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Uh, no, it's just Crypto Bobby.

• 37:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Do we know who has the @crypto_bobby no underscore on Twitter?

• 37:50Speaker 02

  I don't. And the only reason I'm actually Crypto Bobby is because I go by Rob for the most part in real life, but cryptorob.com was not available, so I decided to buy cryptobobby.com. So that was basically, people are like, "Why do you go by Bobby?" I'm like, "Just cryptorob.com wasn't available on GoDaddy."

• 38:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I almost don't want to admit this, but one of the URLs I bought is, I think, a pretty long time ago, pumpbitcoin.com.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  It's actually a pretty good one. Pop it.

• 38:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm probably not gonna do anything with it. But the fact that that was available and I got it made me so happy.

• 38:29Anthony Pompliano?

  So whoever's got cryptorob.com, I've got a buyer for you. I'll facilitate a trade. All right, rapid fire questions. Most important company in crypto other than Proof of Talent?

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Uh, definitely Proof of Talent now.

• 38:43Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm surprised no one's fought me on this question. Like, no one's ever been like, "No, actually, it's our company."

• 38:49Speaker 02

  I think that Coinbase is one of the most important and one of the most interesting. I feel like they've done some...

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Kind of eyebrow raising moves in terms of I feel like they've gone from one of the most conservative companies in the crypto space to I don't know if you saw yesterday considering adding a bunch of new Telegram and handshake and like probably 15 different assets. So I feel like they've definitely taken a more retail approach and I I'm interested to see how that pans out for Coinbase given their their user base and their their pull on the industry rather than some of the like more institutional and a focused answers around like ETFs and things like that.

• 39:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, we'll see. What's the one regulation you would change or improve if you could?

• 39:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I I think the vast majority of the vast majority of people will say the the credit investor laws. As somebody who as of recently, previously was a New Jersey resident and now I'm a New York resident, the bit license is super, super frustrating as a as a new New York resident having to deal with that. It's something that I feel like every other, every different crypto exchange or product or anything, it's like we're available in 49 states minus New York. So for very selfish reasons and also because I think it's onerous for companies to comply with, the bit license is something that I'd love to love to see changed.

• 40:22Anthony Pompliano?

  At some point, they're either going to have state by state regulation or federal regulation. If the federal regulation comes in, they may get rid of the state regulation. So we'll see.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  That'll be nice.

• 40:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Most important book you've ever read?

• 40:33Speaker 02

  There have been a lot of interesting ones, but I think my like favorite and the one that's had probably the longest lasting impression on me is Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. I think that

• 40:45Anthony Pompliano?

  It's fantastic.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's an awesome book and it just goes to show, especially now where you kind of see the overnight success of a lot of people and in like the the tech focused world and with a lot of startups, I mean, companies going to billion dollar valuations in minutes and seconds, basically it feels like and I think Phil Knight going from like $8,000 in sales his first year with Nike and wasn't even Nike, it was Blue Ribbon to like 16,000, basically doubling in sales from absolutely nothing to being a multi-multi-billionaire over the course of like 20, 30 years is such a, like, an inspiring story just around dealing with adversity. So that's, that's probably the most interesting and important book for, for me.

• 41:28Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, uh, aliens, real or not real? Exist or don't exist?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Uh, I'll say they exist. Uh, yeah, they, they exist.

• 41:40Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't sound very confident.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  I, I, I got enough, I got enough problems on, uh, on Earth right now that, uh, I got enough things to worry about here. So I'm, as, as long as they don't come down, uh, in an Independence Day-style fashion and we need Will Smith to save us, I'm not too worried about aliens.

• 41:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Higher probability of a human being able to prove contact with an alien or the Jets going 16-0 in your lifetime?

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Uh, definitely aliens. Like, there is 0% chance, like, negative 0% chance the Jets will ever, uh, ever go 16-0. So, yeah, and if they do, they'll probably not make it to the Super Bowl. So, yeah, aliens, definitely.

• 42:22Anthony Pompliano?

  The, uh, so I, I originally started asking the question and people on the live stream, uh, seem to remember, uh, alien pets. That's where it came from, was, uh, I was laying in bed one night and I was like, if aliens showed up, would they have, would it be like a multi-species, right, where they have pets and there's like the human equivalent? Or are they just all the same thing? Like, what do you think?

• 42:43Speaker 02

  It might, yeah, you know, I feel like the, the pets is probably, uh, probably a solid move. I feel like it's very presumptuous, presumptuous of us to just think that, you know, there's just gonna be one race of aliens. Like, there's probably multiple.

• 42:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and, and-

• 42:56Speaker 02

  We are their pets.

• 42:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, that, of course, we, we are, we are in the simulation. Uh, all right, to finish up and then we'll, uh, we'll take a couple of questions from the live stream once the podcast is over. Uh, what, uh, question do you have for me?

• 43:12Speaker 02

  How do you view?

• 43:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Distribu- how do you view distribution? I feel like that's something that you know just about as well as anybody in the crypto space. And has underrated importance and would be curious just like generally around your thoughts on distribution.

• 43:26Anthony Pompliano?

  A highly controversial thought. Many people would get mad at me for saying it, so I'm going to say it. And then it'll make sense why. Every single piece of content on the internet is entertainment. So even the news is entertainment.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And whether people like it or not, it's not the fact that I think that's the way it should be. It's just a fact of life. It's entertainment. And the second that people started looking at content creation, distribution, etc. Is entertainment. It completely changes the way that you do things, right? So if you look at it, there's a lot of people who have a distribution strategy of I'm going to educate.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 44:07Anthony Pompliano?

  But if the educating is boring and not entertaining, it goes nowhere. Right? There's a lot of people who say, I'm just going to overwhelm the market with content. If it's not entertaining, you don't get anywhere, right? There's a lot of people say I'm going to write the news. I don't care if you write the facts or not. If it's not entertaining, no one's going to read it, right? And so the entertainment factor is either misunderstood or left out a lot of times.

• 44:33Anthony Pompliano?

  What I think that translates to, it doesn't mean that you have to be funny or have to have high production quality from like a, you know, hey, we created a skit and here's a video. It's just the fact that, let me take this livestream for example. There's some people who are watching. They might not understand 80% of what we're talking about, but the fact that we're having fun, we're laughing, whatever. Like it's entertaining to them, so they keep watching, right? They don't know if all of a sudden one of us is going to say some crazy ass thing or whatever. And so to me, distribution is entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. And I- Was joking, but I wasn't joking. When I said to somebody recently, I said, all the marketing is the pre-work for the important stuff. Right? What I meant by that is like all the entertaining and the, you know, the tweets with the emojis and trying to go viral and all that stuff.

• 45:19Anthony Pompliano?

  It's just, you're doing that to build audience. You're doing that to build up impressions and eyeballs. Because then when you have something important to say, or you're a business and you want to sell your product, or you're, you know, for you, you've got a job opportunity that you're trying to fill, whatever. All of that pre-work has become a habitual to folks that they're paying attention.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 45:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And then once you have that, then you capitalize on it by presenting the important information, right? Or whatever the goal is. I think that there's a lot of people that they don't want to put in the pre-work. Because they think it's stupid, it's beneath them, it's too hard, it'll take too long, too much energy, whatever it is. And then what they try to do is they try to capitalize. But it's like, you haven't earned the right to do the capitalization of your efforts until you've done the pre-work, you've been entertaining, etc. And, you know, if I said to you right now, hey, I need you to go on YouTube and get a bunch of people to sign up for something.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:14Anthony Pompliano?

  You're just cashing in social capital, right? Like, they're like, yeah, we know this dude, we paid attention, like, okay, he likes it. I'll go do my own research, but like, I'm in. And so from a distribution standpoint, it's the WWF. Like, that is what Twitter is. If you look at Twitter, there are good guys, bad guys, there's heroes, there's villains, there, you know, there's all this stuff. It's just entertainment.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, I definitely agree with that. I feel like content is kind of like an escape for a lot of people too. It's, you know, it's, it's something to somewhat distract from the everyday. And there are, I mean, especially like crypto Twitter and some of the, you know, some of the elements around that. It's such a wild, like, unique world with, like you said, so many different kind of types of people, subsets of the industry that take a lot of kind of complex understanding and different people trying to entertain different groups, so.

• 47:12Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. So, before we shut off the podcast, I'll leave you with one comment that you didn't see. Somebody just said, "The Jets are entertaining."

• 47:21Speaker 02

  I would highly disagree with you on that as somebody who was sitting on my couch on Monday night watching a pitiful 23 to 3 loss that was not entertaining.

• 47:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Shout out Wu-Tang Clan 10. I see you in the live stream. I know who you are. You're hiding, but I see you. All right. I appreciate you coming on.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks a lot.

• 47:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, everyone. Pop here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.