My friends, I've spent 10,000 hours in crypto, about three hours a day on average for the last 10 years. And I've learned so much that you will love hearing what I've learned here, so you don't have to spend 10,000 hours in crypto yourself to understand what I do. Genius, to me, is this: can you take a bunch of information and simplify it so anybody can understand? So here's everything I've ever learned about crypto, drastically simplified.
Almost all of crypto, 99% of altcoins, in my view are gambling, a waste of your time, have no real technology, aren't going anywhere, and are a bad investment. In almost every case, you could have just bought Ethereum eight years ago and Bitcoin 10 years ago and done really well without having to do almost anything else in crypto.
The most powerful question you can ask in crypto
And then the question is, what's the equivalent of Bitcoin 10 years ago, Ethereum eight years ago? And I'll tell you, I don't know. I don't know what the equivalent of that is today. That, to me, is the very most powerful question you can ask.
And underneath that, to figure out what the equivalent of Bitcoin 10 years ago or Ethereum eight years ago is today, is this: what crypto is backed by technology that is so useful that people and corporations and institutions will build on it just because of the technology, not because of hype or getting paid to build on it? What technology is so good that it's going to get adoption and be a big part of the internet in the future?
In 10,000 hours in crypto, I've wasted absolutely huge amounts of time watching irrelevant information like price predictions and technical analysis charts, and reviews of altcoins that are purely based on speculation and not technology. So if I could boil down everything I've learned in crypto, it's this: Internet Computer Protocol is the most amazing thing I've ever seen by far in crypto.
Why Internet Computer is the most amazing thing I've seen
Why? It's the technology. It offers the best solution anywhere to a $10 trillion problem of cybercrime, by being the first full-stack platform where you can build an application. For example, you can build something as simple as my website, which is hosted on Internet Computer. You can't build that with anything else. And we've never seen something in crypto where you could build a game fully on chain with NFTs, graphics, and videos, where you could put a game that was hundreds of gigabytes directly on chain. On Internet Computer, you can.
If I could boil all the hours of learning I've done down and simplify it so you could take action on it, here's what I'd do: research Internet Computer. Look for outliers, things that aren't like everything else. And bet on technology that's backed by the best team. For example, in crypto, the DFINITY Foundation is the largest research and development team in blockchain. As you can see at dfinity.org, they're a major contributor to Internet Computer Protocol. There are hundreds of projects building on this.
And what I'm seeing is the things in crypto that grow organically, because there's a lot of competition, because it allows you to build stuff like OpenChat. You cannot build OpenChat on any other crypto. OpenChat is a Discord or Telegram equivalent, but it's fully on chain. And I've sent people hundreds of ICP, thousands of dollars, on OpenChat. I send it almost instantaneously with almost no fee. And the community here has grown. This has grown faster than my Discord or my Telegram ever has, 10 times as many people in my OpenChat as Telegram, six times as many as Discord.
Earning an APR on an untaxed, unrealized principal
And unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, you can actually just leave the principal in Internet Computer and earn, right now, 15.6% APR in voting rewards. One of the sweetest things I've ever seen in crypto is that you can earn rewards on the principal without having to touch the principal. Because the principal is the money you put in, and then there's the accrued value, like how much it's gone up. And if you can get an APR on a principal that's untaxed because it's unrealized capital gains, in other words you haven't sold it, then you can get an APR on an untaxed, unrealized capital gains principal. That, to me, is so massive. There's nothing better than that when you combine it with the technology.
Internet Computer Protocol has the most advanced DAO. The whole chain is upgraded by DAO proposals, and that's how you get the voting rewards. There are proposals almost every day, and anyone can make one. The adoption and the projects we're seeing launch on Internet Computer are amazing. And in all the time I've been in crypto, nothing has ever impressed me this much, since I first discovered Bitcoin and went from zero to one. There's nothing else in the world where you can get an APR on an APR for free.
Internet Computer uses a reverse gas fee model, where the developer pays the cost. I saw somebody posting on X talking about how, in the future, cryptos are going to have reverse gas models. They don't know that Internet Computer even exists. And most of crypto doesn't know about this. If you want to keep going down this path with me, I share the full journey in my ICP Crypto playlist, and you're always welcome to come talk it through with me directly inside the Jerry Banfield Family.
The devil's in the details: how is your crypto actually built?
Most of the people who've put this much time into crypto have accepted huge amounts of money to promote coins that, in my view, technologically don't have any value. They've essentially copied Ethereum's technology or Bitcoin's technology and made small changes, and then they've used the investors' money to pay huge amounts to developers to build using their chain. But the applications on all cryptos besides ICP are built off chain, on things like Amazon Web Services or IPFS for the back end. And that means there's a centralized third party that controls the interface between the off-chain assets and the on-chain data.
This is one of the most important things you need to know in crypto. As they say, the devil's in the details. How is the crypto you've invested in built? Because when you build stuff on centralized services, we've seen things like exchanges and bridges where one party is trusted to hold huge amounts of money, and then they get hacked, or it's an inside job and they transfer the money away and call it a hack. We've seen so many investors lose their money in these situations, and I'm grateful I've never lost money in those situations.
But where I've lost money is in not thoroughly looking into how good the technology is, and in not being patient enough to just find the best thing in crypto. I found Bitcoin 10 years ago, but I wasn't patient enough to hold on to the 60 Bitcoin I had in 2017. I was too quick to take my gains. Same thing with Ethereum. I found Ethereum in 2016, and I had a bunch of Ethereum, I mean hundreds of Ethereum that I bought for less than ten dollars, and I wasn't patient enough. I took my gains. I made lots of money in the short term.
But if you want something better than quick money, if you want enduring financial freedom, there's nothing that, to me, is better positioned to give you that than Internet Computer right now, because of the staking rewards, because of the applications we can actually see built on it, because of the team behind it, and because of all the applications that are launching on it and choosing to build on Internet Computer. That's just my own experience and my own opinion, and it's why I eventually decided to put my life savings into ICP.
Why I turn down hundreds of thousands of dollars a month
I found Internet Computer totally for free, while most people who have this level of experience have, unfortunately, been compromised by money. Would you be surprised to know that I could make hundreds of thousands of dollars more a month than I do? And I already make good money. Right now, you all are scheduling one-on-one calls on my website at jerrybanfield.com. I have one of these scheduled, I had one this morning, I have one most days, and I make four to six thousand dollars a month or so just on video calls alone, not to mention my ad revenue. So I make like ten thousand a month just doing really honest, down-to-earth videos like this.
But if you were me, would you turn down hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to show you a whole bunch of altcoins that I know are not good, from my own research and my own experience? I could easily have my own bag of any of them. But would you turn down hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, where all I'd have to do for it would be to review all these other altcoins, take all these paid sponsorships, and lie to you every day? Because my hours in crypto tell me it's real simple. All you need to do is research Internet Computer. It's the first Bitcoin and Ethereum layer 2 that exists, having both layer 2s on one ecosystem, and that's a huge deal. That's literally all I'd do in crypto. To me, there's nothing else that's even worth doing. You can see more of my reasoning in my Money playlist.
So would you, if you were me, tell everybody that and accept hundreds of thousands of dollars less every month? I could have a really nice car instead of a 16- or 17-year-old car, that I love driving, with 200,000 miles on it. I could have all my debts paid off instead of still having a mortgage, student loan debts, and business debts. But how much is it worth to sleep every night?
Intelligently selfish, not a saint
Unfortunately, there are very, very few people who've put this much time into crypto and who have not taken a big non-disclosure agreement and a huge contract with a whole bunch of money in exchange for being silent about things you should really know about, and who are willing to complicate things and confuse you instead of just giving you the data. I don't consider myself a saint in crypto. I just am intelligently selfish. I know that no amount of money is worth being unhappy. And I know that, for me, it's dangerous to lie and be dishonest, because I'm an alcoholic who's sober almost 10 years. If I were to take that money and just do whatever it took to make as much for myself, you might see me, like some of these other crypto influencers, on somebody's lawn with a gun. I just know better than that at this point. Turning down easy crypto money is something I've had to do more than once.
What I'm seeing is that there are a lot more creators coming up who have only put in a few hundred hours, or a few thousand hours, into crypto, and they're putting out really good information too. Like Bobby O. I watch Bobby O, and he has great information on his videos. I watch Cityscape, and there are some other creators with my kind of vibe to them. Once you find us, you won't be able to watch those other ones anymore. Cityscape has some great videos. He's an actual developer and a former Navy officer, and he's all in on ICP, doing videos about ICP every day. And then there's Bobby O and there's Blockchain Pill. Those are the people I watch, Bobby O and Blockchain Pill, because they have great data, and they appear to care first and foremost about making smart investments for themselves and then educating based on that, instead of trying to make as much money and get as many views as possible.
This calm voice is how I actually am
If you appreciated this calm, down-to-earth vibe, I love doing these videos, and this calm voice is how I am normally. I got into the habit of shouting and trying to create hype, but I realized that doesn't match everything else I'm doing now, and I've moved into the house instead of recording in my office. I'm a full-time creator. I've got an autobiography channel, a thoughts channel, two crypto channels, a gaming channel, and I make music. And I care about you having a life filled with happiness, joy, freedom, and wealth like I have. My goal is to share that with you every day, and you're welcome to come be part of the Family while I do. So I really appreciate your time. I hope it was good for you, and I'll record another video for you soon.