Here is how cryptocurrency YouTube actually works, from me, a crypto YouTuber who has been on the inside of this thing since 2016 and 2017. By 2018 I was one of the biggest crypto YouTubers in the world, and I actually quit for a few years in 2018 because I was so disgusted with what I saw. You all kept asking me to come back and make videos that would really help you and just not be like all the other stuff I see in crypto YouTube. I want you to really hear what I am saying before you do anything else on crypto YouTube, because this is ugly. I wish it did not work like this, and I am not saying every single creator is operating like this, but the vast majority of content I see in crypto YouTube is operating based on how I am about to explain it to you.
Step one: who even decides to become a crypto YouTuber
So let's start with step one. Who even decides to become a crypto YouTuber? I can tell you: someone who looks at crypto and is excited about it and thinks, "I can make some money off of making videos about crypto." To be fully transparent, as I always am, why do you think I came back into crypto in the first place after quitting for several years? After I did a whole bunch of things besides crypto, from teaching classes online to being a professional gamer, and then bottoming out on everything in 2022, I thought, "Well, if I want some more money, I will just make crypto videos again." That is why I started making crypto videos again in 2022, after taking years off.
Most people who get into making videos about crypto are motivated by money to start with. That is the basic foundation of why they are making videos. Many creators on YouTube certainly want to make money, but many of the creators, especially smaller ones, are making videos because they want to help people and because it is something they love to do. And yes, many of the biggest creators are very money motivated also, but they started off at least doing this just for joy. Whereas many in the crypto space only see money from the very beginning. This is a problem, because when your primary motivation is money, and when your outlook is "how do I make money for myself," this leads us to the next big problem.
The whole space is built around maximizing your own income
The next big problem we encounter in crypto YouTube is that most people on crypto YouTube are focusing primarily on maximizing their own income, and what happens to their followers and viewers is secondary. This is it. You can see this in some channels especially, that just go out there and hype everything up. They are doing that because they are trying to get search traffic on all these different terms and then pull people from all these communities to watch their videos and like them. This has created an environment in crypto YouTube where the vast majority of what you see is positive: "Oh, this is going to 100X, this is going to 1,000X, this is going to be the next big thing." Because if you want to make the most money for yourself, that generally is the easiest and most effective approach to take.
When I came back to crypto YouTube, that is exactly what I did. I started making videos saying this coin's going to 10X, this coin's going to 50X, this coin looks great. And it worked. I rapidly built my channel into a channel that was making $10,000 a month in just a few months, and I was giving out information that was not well researched. That is the unfortunate big truth around crypto YouTube: much of the information is not well researched. Most of the information is surface information, nothing more than looking at price charts and narratives and hype and speculation. And most of the information is also given out to get people to trade, because if I wanted to make the most money off of you possible, all I would do is make videos hyping everything up just like everybody else does.
Because I am more entertaining and more practiced than most people, and I have been in crypto a long time, I can pick better coins and make better quality videos than some of these other people who are really struggling in the quality department. But they will say a coin is going to 100X, and people watch it anyway. If I wanted to make the most money for myself, I would do exactly what I did when I started my channel, except I would also send you to an exchange and tell you to copy trade me.
The offers I get from exchanges
I have gotten offers from exchanges. One in particular was very detailed and gave me exact examples of other YouTubers doing this. They said, based on what these YouTubers are getting, they expected I could very easily earn a thousand-plus USDT a day. And all I needed to do, they said, was put a link to the exchange in my videos and tell people in the videos to go through my link, sign up for the exchange, and copy trade me. That is all I had to do. I get offers like that, similar offers from exchanges, all the time, and I have ignored them. I do not think that is actually good for you. But for most of the crypto creators, unfortunately, you are a secondary consideration in their mind. If you do well off their videos, that is great, but job number one is to get them paid. That is how most crypto creators are thinking, because it is a space that is about money and making money.
This means that most of the content that gets created, unfortunately, follows the logic of "I am first priority and you are second priority." Then it is in my best interest, if I want the most views and the most money for me, to just talk positive about every different coin, get you to copy trade me, and then I can make a fortune.
Where it gets really nasty: the coins themselves
Where this gets really nasty is that there are all these different altcoins, and many of the altcoins have been created with the same mindset that people get into crypto with to start with, which is to make as much money as fast as possible with the least amount of effort. If that means copying somebody else's blockchain, if it means copying somebody else's technology and trying to make a unique spin on it, if it means creating a meme coin, there is an absolute huge amount of cryptos out there that have created all this money off of their coin. And then they are handing out all kinds of money to people who make videos, like me.
I could get thousands of dollars per video with my audience. So take someone at 10X my audience, and people at 10X my audience can get tens of thousands of dollars per video to promote a coin. Now, you are required to disclose if you have been paid to promote a coin on videos, and I see many people are doing a good job accurately labeling that they have been paid by a coin. But it is often not that obvious. You will see the little YouTube disclosure, and it is not obvious as much, even for just branding. Even if you scroll by these videos, you do not see that they are paid. But if you see a bunch of videos that people have been paid to make, and of course they are always paid to present things in a positive light, then you have got this vast amount of paid content, often by people who have the biggest followings.
And that is not even the whole problem. That is only part of it. Most crypto YouTubers are not willing to say no to all the money that I say no to. I repeatedly get offers, just constantly. "Jerry, we will give you $500 to just do a video about our coin." And I could do that video in 30 minutes. That is a thousand dollars an hour: 30 minutes, crank a little video on my second channel, not even on this one, on my second channel, 500 bucks, do a video about it. And to me that is not even enough. If I was going to say yes, some of these other ones offer much more, very lucrative deals like, "Jerry, sync your YouTube with our platform, you will make a bunch of money off it, and we will give you the token." Some really nice offers. I say no to all of them, unless I have already made a video about it for free because I really actually like it. I have said no to every single sponsorship offer I have gotten this year.
Some of these coins will even just give you money, hoping that you will make a video about them. And I did talk with the founder of one coin, and he sent me a decent allocation of the coin, hoping I would make another video about it. I reviewed his coin more prior to making a video, and I thought, "This sucks. I am not making another video about this crap coin." So I sold the coin. I figured, there is no contract, you sent me that money, I am going to sell it and I am not doing anything for you. So I am one of the few people who will also come out and admit that in the past, I did promote coins, I did take money to promote coins, and I disclosed that. I also bought huge amounts of the coin.
So are you seeing how ugly this is? And I have not even gotten halfway there yet. I have saved some of the better stuff for what I am about to describe.
Putting it together: the wavelength of attraction
To summarize what we have already talked about: many crypto YouTubers get into this just to make money to start with, so they are purely thinking about themselves, purely thinking about making money to begin with. Then there are all these cryptos that are created with the same mindset, that have all this money to hand out to people like me to promote their content. And there is a huge incentive to just talk positive about stuff, because when I go make videos talking about how a coin looks horrible, then the sponsorship offers start to dry up as well. Although some people do not even care. They see that I just rip coin after coin and they still ask. What you are seeing is the wavelength and frequency of attraction. If you are just thinking about getting quick money, then you will be suckered into a lot of this stuff.
But it gets even worse than this. You have got a bunch of paid content going around, and then you have people watching that paid content and buying the coin. And one of the worst parts about crypto YouTube, which hits everybody, and I cannot even say I am totally free of it, is confirmation bias. You have all this paid content that goes around, and then people will follow this paid content and buy these coins that often the creator of the video did not even believe in that much to start with. They just shilled it, or tried to sell it, and then said, "It's not financial advice." Does saying it is not financial advice really matter? Does it really do any good? That is why I do not say that in my videos. I say it is educational content and entertaining content, made to help you do your own research. You have all these paid videos going around, then you have people who buy crypto off these paid videos, and then confirmation bias kicks in.
Confirmation bias is the trap
Confirmation bias is where you've already bought something, so now you are constantly seeking confirmation that what you've bought is actually good. Especially if you bought something that is inherently worthless and going to zero, something that was just a paid show to begin with, then you're going to feel insecure about it. You're going to constantly be trying to think about when you should sell it and take profits. You're going to be constantly scared about losing your money. So you'll be motivated to look for more videos hyping up that same coin, which will often repeat the same stuff you heard in the sponsored one.
This leads to all the crypto YouTubers who are small enough that they're not getting much in the way of sponsorships. They are just creating videos about all these coins that people have been paid to sponsor at some point. And the people who have been paid to sponsor coins will often do additional videos just to get their audience to come back and watch again. So if I do a paid video about something, and then I bought it myself and I got a bunch of allocation in the coin, then like many crypto YouTubers I might repeatedly do videos about the coins I already have, and those videos aren't sponsored. So you think this is their real opinion, but really one of the worst parts about crypto YouTube is that nearly everybody is stuck in confirmation bias.
You'll see some crypto YouTubers with huge followings who do really good research. But their confirmation bias means they only ever pitch the same one, two, three, or handful of cryptos over and over again, because there's this self-centered interest of, "Well, I think this coin is great and I'm holding a bag of it, so I'm going to endlessly promote it." And to be fair, I'm an Internet Computer maxi at this point. The only way you can really fight against confirmation bias at all is to do what I've done this year, or to not buy anything at all, which I also did, because I realized confirmation bias would be one of the most detrimental points not just to my videos, but to everybody's videos.
How little research really gets done
I realized the necessity of getting better research myself. In my experience, you'd be shocked at how little research many of the crypto YouTubers you watch actually do on this stuff. I know because I've put out videos that got a bunch of views where I spent 30 minutes looking at a coin, and I know other people are doing that too. I know what y'all are doing. People are hyping coins up, and the motivation from the beginning was just to get views and get clicks.
I went to try and avoid confirmation bias in one of two ways. You can either just not hold anything, or you can do what I did: sell all of your crypto, sell everything, and then review stuff, look at things, and try to figure out what's the best. Many crypto YouTubers have just not done that much research, because of confirmation bias especially. Many of them, just like you, got suckered into buying some of these coins they thought were good, watching other people who often were paid initially to hype them up. They bought them, and now they're hyping them up, and in many cases they haven't even really researched the coin themselves. Or they've researched the coin they're holding, but they've not researched the rest of what's out there.
I see this all the time with Internet Computer. I'm shocked at how many crypto YouTubers have not done their own research on Internet Computer. I'm shocked at how many don't even know what is, objectively and factually according to anyone who has actually looked, the best technology in all of crypto. No one who has actually looked at Internet Computer's technology is going to disagree with you that this is the most advanced technology in crypto. There's nothing else that does all the stuff this does, that can put it all on chain, that's so cheap to run. You can just look at this and see the objective facts and the data. But some crypto YouTubers are so stuck in confirmation bias that they don't want to see anything besides their bag, especially if there's a coin that is threatening their bag.
Running a tournament on my own portfolio
I was able to get over this by holding a whole bunch of different altcoins. I had 30 to 50 altcoins in my portfolio at one point, and what I did is I compared them all to each other. I realized that, based on the data, 99.9% of the altcoins out there are on their way to zero, and they're on their way fast. At best, they've got one pump in a bull run, and a second bull run that's much weaker, and then they're just dead after that. I realized, looking at my portfolio, that if I wanted to succeed as a crypto investor myself, absent of content creation, I needed to figure out which cryptos in my portfolio were the best.
So I essentially ran a tournament where I compared all the different cryptos, and I dumped all the ones that sucked, and I ended up just left with Internet Computer, because the technology is far advanced and the price has not moved compared to where I think the market cap deserves to be. Even though I had bought Internet Computer along with like 50 other cryptos, I didn't really understand at first why it was so much better than all the rest of my portfolio. But I reviewed and did more and more research on the cryptos I was holding, and I ended up left with the one that stood out.
The dirtiest side of crypto YouTube
One experience I've had, which generally the bigger crypto YouTubers have had too, is that my channel got taken down for a week after I started spitting the truth out and I stopped just hyping up all these altcoins. My channel got taken down after it was mass reported by bots, and this is one of the dirtiest, ugliest sides of crypto YouTube. Now, I have no proof of this, but I've got a lot of what I think of as evidence. I've been on YouTube 12 years. I've been on tech my whole life. From what I've seen, there are groups of people who have money and who have networks of bots.
What they do is they buy into altcoins that are good pump opportunities: things that are brand new, stuff that has launched and gone nowhere, with a pretty flat price chart that nobody's talking about. They especially target newer projects that aren't getting much attention, that have not spiked, and that have a decent amount of circulating supply out. They'll buy into these projects and, if possible, directly get the cooperation of the team. Then they'll slowly stock up so they don't move the price, just keep accumulating a little bit over time to load up, and then push the price really hard all at once to get it to trend. Ideally, they get some paid shills in position first, and then they use bots to hammer the videos. When you've got the paid shill and you know it's coming, you have all the bots standing by. This is what I imagine is going on based on what I've seen.
It looks like to me that there are these third parties out there, and when I was just shilling all these junk coins, it looks like they were using bots to push my videos. And it looks like that then, when I stopped shilling their coins and started turning on their coins, they used the bots to attack my channel. During that week that I had my channel taken down, I had done absolutely nothing wrong. I've been on YouTube for 12 years with no history of policy violations, up until a community guidelines strike on a video that was two years old that I got after this happened. So at the time, I had never had any violation upheld in 12 years on YouTube. And thank you to all of you who supported me on X, reaching out to Team YouTube to get my channel restored. That's probably the only reason I got my channel back.
The commitment I made to myself
During that week, I went through my portfolio, and I realized that if this was the end of my time on crypto YouTube, then more than likely the portfolio of cryptos I was holding was very poorly chosen, because I had the honesty and integrity to see that I had bought those cryptos based on which ones I thought would give me the most views. This is one of the darkest, nastiest sides of crypto YouTube: there's this huge incentive built in. This is why, with crypto YouTube, you've got to have real trust in the creator themselves. It's why some creators with the most experience only talk about Bitcoin and Ethereum. They know what a nasty game it is, and they don't want to hold crypto in their portfolio at all.
At the same time, when I was just talking Bitcoin and Ethereum, a lot of you told me that really there's nothing better than Bitcoin and Ethereum I could be talking about, which is how I found Internet Computer. I made a commitment to myself that I will not do videos on crypto YouTube, or any kind of video, unless it is thinking of you first. If my video is not genuinely helpful for you, it doesn't matter what kind of money I get from it. I will not do stuff just to make money, because back when I got to be one of the top crypto YouTubers in the world in 2017 and 2018, I would look at a coin and think, "I can pump this coin hard, I like this coin," and I'd buy it, and then I'd go off on it, and it'd pump. Then at some point I'd realize it wasn't a good investment, or something was wrong with it that I'd intentionally, selectively blinded myself to, and then I'd sell it.
Most crypto YouTubers will not tell you that they've done these things, and that this is influencing how they're creating their videos. When you put all these things together, it's a really ugly scenario on crypto YouTube, and you need to be very careful who you watch. Because if you watch content hyping up junk coins all day and you buy those coins, you are stuck in a reinforcement loop. You bought a coin that was crappy, and therefore, because you bought it, you want to watch more videos about it, and therefore you're incentivizing creators to make videos hyping up junk coins because you own them, and you're rewarding their efforts for promoting them. Meanwhile, those who are promoting things like Internet Computer, that are actually incredible and have the best technology in crypto, get drowned out.
If it's not about the technology, it's just gambling
If we're not investing in the best technology in crypto, then why are we even doing this? There's no reason. If it's not about the technology, it's just gambling, and there's nothing else to it. I had a gambling addiction before, which is another reason I quit crypto for a while. I started to feel like it was just gambling and just making money for me, and that was all it was.
When you put all of this together, it's pretty nasty on crypto YouTube. Almost every creator, though not every one, comes down to pure confirmation bias. They're already holding the coins they're talking about, so they want to sell you on those same coins. Many of those confirmation biases got started with people being paid to share, and then they get reinforced when others join the bandwagon for free because bots are pushing content that talks about certain coins. Since I stopped shilling a bunch of these altcoins that are crap, it looks like the bot views have totally dropped off my channel. There are still all these scam bots that come in and leave fake comments, so I personally don't even read the YouTube comments anymore. YouTube sometimes gets better at removing the bots, and then the bots change again.
So crypto YouTube is kind of scary. Many of you have asked me to make a video explaining this, because while I understand it, a lot of you don't realize that the vast, vast majority of the content is created purely without your best interests in mind. It's not good for you, and it will cause you to lose money. If you follow what you see in the videos, the supposed "not financial advice," in my experience you will generally lose money and waste your time. It's disappointing, and it's sad to me.
Why I actually talk to you
It's sad to me because I have one-on-one calls with a lot of you, and that's helped me create better crypto content too. Most of the people who create crypto content keep themselves at a distance from you. They don't want to talk to you. They don't want to see your face, because then you become a real person to them. I sit down and talk with people even though I could make much more money not doing it and just selling courses, taking sponsorships, or doing exchange referrals. I don't do any of that stuff, because when I talk with you all, I have to look you in the face on Zoom and listen to your stories, which I love hearing. Many of your stories are sad. Many of you have lost a lot of money in crypto, and it's just nice to tell me about that and have somebody listen who understands. That's what motivated me to do better. Today, the best way to work with me on this is to join my community, the Jerry Banfield Family, where we can actually talk through your situation instead of you watching from a distance.
If a video doesn't give you the best information I have and that I'm using for myself, and if it doesn't provide some valuable learning, then it's not worth making. It doesn't matter how much I get out of it. That's why I've started to make a lot of critique videos, and why I've tried to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt around a lot of these other altcoins. Many of these altcoins only ever get hype videos. When it comes to negative reviews saying they're horrible, I'm often the only voice going after that particular altcoin and saying, "I don't think this is a good idea, my friends."
Fraudulent copyright strikes and the cost of speaking up
In some cases, some of these cryptos are so dirty that they've taken action to file fraudulent copyright strikes against my videos, just because I showed their logo and went over their website in my description. That's fraudulent, because it's fair use. If I'm criticizing your coin that looks obviously bad to me, it is fair use for me to put your crypto logo in the thumbnail and to go over your website and your social media content. That's one reason I've stopped putting the logos in my thumbnails and videos. These crypto companies are more hesitant to file a fraudulent copyright strike when I haven't even shown the logo in the thumbnail, because they know that could never stand up in court. The only way you can keep a video down on YouTube is to file a lawsuit. So on every one of my negative crypto reviews, I am facing the potential of some malicious crypto company filing a lawsuit and forcing me to take it to court just to try and silence me. I'm glad that hasn't happened yet, but this is why, when you search a crypto, you find almost nothing but hype videos.
For many years I refused to even participate, feeling like I was just in the mud and couldn't stay clean myself. Now I'm glad I've found a recipe. I've done my research, and I've found what I see is the best technology in crypto by far. Nothing even comes close in comparison, and that's Internet Computer. I've never been paid to talk about Internet Computer. To be fair, the majority of you voted on my livestream that if DFINITY were willing to pay me to keep doing the videos I'm already doing, based on the research I've already done, I might as well accept a sponsorship on some future videos. That's possible. I won't do any sponsored videos until I actually get the money, but it's possible down the road. And to be fair, I'm now in confirmation bias about Internet Computer too.
Making videos about one crypto in particular is not the best strategy to make money. It's much better to just cover all these other ones and get the bots to push your channel. I did nothing to make that happen, and I have no proof, but it looks like if you talk about certain cryptos, bots will push your videos hard. It even looks like they manually curate those videos, like they watch the video, decide if bots should push it, and then they push it.
You don't need to live inside crypto YouTube
I hope this helps you see the dirty, dark side of YouTube, because then you can make better decisions about who to watch. Naturally, I think I'm a great person to watch. But to be fair, you don't need to watch videos on crypto YouTube every day. My goal is to give you information that's so good that maybe you don't even need to do crypto anymore. If you agree with my thoughts on ICP, then you really don't need any other cryptos. That's how I'm doing it. You really don't need to watch the price on a daily basis. You just put it in there and go on with your life.
If I didn't make crypto videos, I wouldn't do anything with crypto on most days except vote on proposals, and I might not even do that. Once I found Internet Computer, I went all in and locked it up for eight years, and after that I wouldn't do anything. So I hope the information in my videos is so good that you could just use it and then stop spending all this time. I'm shocked at how much time you all are giving to crypto videos that, for the most part, are just wasting your time. You're watching a video, you're watching price charts, and you're hearing all this pointless speculation. Even some of the data-driven videos are repetitive and unnecessary. I get that Bitcoin adoption is going great. I get that lots of people are using and developing on Ethereum. I don't need to see 600 different stats reinforcing that, repeated day after day. I got the point. If you want to see how I think about all of this over time, I've gathered it in my Crypto Reviews playlist.
Trust the people who show you their bag
Stay safe and be careful, my friend. Think about why you're here. If you're here to build wealth, think about who else out there really cares about you building wealth as much or more than they care about building their own. Who's not just stuck in a poorly chosen confirmation bias? And who can you really trust? I've shown my bag lots of times on my stream. I have 2,500 Internet Computer locked for eight years. That's what I've got. I suggest that if you watch somebody, you should be able to see exactly which cryptos they're holding, completely for free on their channel. You should never have to pay to see their portfolio, because that's how you know you can trust them, and most people will never show you that. I don't trust anybody's opinion if I can't clearly see exactly where their bag is at.
Some crypto YouTubers are pretty transparent. They'll say, "Yeah, I'm a Bitcoin maxi, I've got Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana," and they're right up front with it. That tells you where their confirmation bias is, and then they can actually give some better reviews on the stuff they're not holding. So if you don't know exactly what the person you're watching is holding, be careful. I'm holding Internet Computer and a few small positions in Internet Computer tokens, so now you can see my confirmation bias clearly.
At this point, I'm just getting hypnotized by my own voice. I really appreciate you reading this and thinking it through with me. If you'd like to chat with me, I read all my messages on Discord and on OpenChat. Much love, and I'll wrap this up now.