My friends, Crypto YouTube has contributed to investors losing billions of dollars to bankrupt exchanges, to altcoins that were a total scam and money grab, and to NFTs that had no underlying value. I'm going to explain to you here how the whole system works for Crypto YouTube. And if you watch videos on Crypto YouTube, it's very important you understand what I'm telling you, because this information is the difference between you getting ripped off and you building wealth in crypto.
Now, what do I know? I've been in crypto for nine years. I was one of the first big crypto YouTubers. I was getting like 50,000 to 100,000 views per video back in 2016, 2017, and 2018. And if you watched crypto on YouTube, you knew Jerry Banfield in those years. I quit Crypto YouTube in 2018 because I was so disgusted with the entire system. I felt that I had done really well for myself. I profited hundreds of thousands of dollars in a short amount of time with not that much work, but many of my followers got wrecked. Some of them actually came at me and ripped me to shreds, saying that dumb altcoin video I made cost them, that if they'd have just held their Bitcoin, they would have gotten way better gains. And I felt that I could not even be an honest person on Crypto YouTube, that it was so dirty. And the game has gotten much dirtier since then. It is rigged in so many different ways. And if you understand how it's rigged, then you can sift the quality information from the quantity of crap.
Why do people make crypto videos?
The first thing you need to understand about Crypto YouTube is: why do people make crypto videos? I make crypto videos because, well, when I started, it was something fun I was doing. And then I made crypto videos because I couldn't find anything else that made more money than me making crypto videos. There were single videos I made that I just made thousands and thousands of dollars off of, from one video, in a few minutes' work. Most of the people making videos on YouTube for crypto came into it out of self-interest of making money. And therefore, you need to strongly consider that in everything that's said. Because there's often a big difference between what I would do in order to make the most amount of money on Crypto YouTube for myself, versus what I would do to help people make the most money and build a world full of wealthy people.
So the most important thing to be aware of on Crypto YouTube is the underlying motivation of the person who's creating the videos. The vast majority of creators stop completely at anything beyond them making money for themselves. For many of the creators on YouTube, all you are is a view, a dollar sign, an opportunity for them to make money. I would like to express my deep respect to those creators who are very committed to supporting their audience, because what I've found is that the hardest part of being on Crypto YouTube is the ethics. I can make videos that will make me a bunch of money, and you will get ripped off, and I often will have no consequences. It takes some serious ethics to not do that. And that is why I came back to crypto: because I wanted to do better than I had done last time. To not just think about what video I can make that will bring me in a bunch of money.
Only watch people who want you to become wealthy
So if you're watching a bunch of people on Crypto YouTube who are interested in making themselves money, then it's better to not watch people who are primarily concerned with making themselves money. Therefore, it's essential to only watch people who are concerned with giving you quality information and making sure you become wealthy. That's why I show up here. I don't need to make any money. My wife has a six-figure job. I love making music. I can literally just make music on Twitch. I don't have to make any money from my business at all. The only reason I make these crypto videos is because I'm disgusted with how many of you have gotten ripped off, and the amounts of money you all have lost.
I haven't lost money in crypto — well, when I first started, my first cycle I did, I lost it all in Bitcoin. And after that, I made hundreds of thousands in profit. And then even in the last bull market, I bought one crypto in 2021 for $300 and sold it for $15,000 in 2022. And then I managed to screw around and lose money in some altcoins. And I started a crypto channel, and I started a crypto channel again. And again, I got sucked into the black hole of Crypto YouTube of making videos purely to get myself the most views and the most money. In March 2023, I was doing great. I had a three-month-old crypto channel that made me $10,000 in a single month. At which point I got disgusted. I'm like, what? I'm just doing the same crap I was before. I'm making any video I can to get the most amount of views, to get people to like me, and while I'm profiting, I don't think I'm really helping other people that much.
That's when I switched my strategy, and I've paid financially for switching my strategy severely. Because going on Crypto YouTube and just giving honest reviews of altcoins and telling you what I see as the truth that will help you build wealth is often not what you all want to hear. You're vulnerable on Crypto YouTube when you're purely getting on there out of greed, looking for short-term quick money without consideration of the bigger picture, without consideration of other people. You're very vulnerable to someone else with the same mindset who is in a superior position to you, ripping you off — someone who's got an audience and uses that audience to shill their stupid token on Ethereum and to make themselves a billionaire while almost every one of their sheep gets slaughtered. I'm not going to say who I was thinking of specifically, but you can probably imagine. I don't point people out, because what you need to understand is the system.
The system: bots, greed, and delusion
The system on Crypto YouTube rewards videos that talk to people who are purely greedy and delusional. And there are networks of bots. There are networks of bots that intentionally pump videos up with things like "this dumb coin is going to 100x." While many YouTubers are not directly aware of the bots, this is why many crypto YouTubers cover the same thing over and over again. They're not aware of the bots; they're just aware of the same dumb coins over and over again, because bots are pushing every one of their videos. Then people start to like all these garbage altcoins. The only reason that happened is because bots are pushing the videos, a bunch of people were watching them, and then, because people have seen the same dumb coin over and over again, they think it's good. But it's not. It's trash. It's been trash the whole time. And you've been tricked by people whose pure intention is to take money from you — who don't care about you, who do care about buying themselves the biggest diamond in the world, buying themselves a car and posting a pic on Twitter, on X, with a Rolex flex. There, I said it. That's all they care about. They only want to rip you off. You are purely a means to an end, a stepping stone.
There are tons of crypto YouTubers who have all kinds of very clever schemes set up — affiliate schemes where exchanges pay them to use an affiliate link to trade leverage and futures, things that no regular crypto investor should mess with. I don't mess with futures or leverage trading, and while I have the capabilities and the experience to do it, I don't want to put the time and energy into trying to do it well. The majority of you are in that same spot. I'm not going to put that much time and energy into that situation.
Crypto YouTube is rigged so heavily that I guarantee you there are probably two to five altcoins, at a minimum, that you think are great right now, that are pure trash fundamentally, that you're going to lose money in. And the only reason you think that is because almost all the stuff you've watched is from people who are self-interested in taking your money and tricking you. Like a salesman in a car dealership — at least they're offering a car, which has real value, although they may be trying to mark it up as much as possible, and they'll say anything to get you to pay more. Crypto YouTube is like car salesmen with no car. You get some empty piece of code online that has absolutely no value and will go to zero.
An organized crime syndicate at work
The dirtiest part about Crypto YouTube is that there seems to be an organized crime syndicate operating and repeatedly launching a bunch of crappy coins, doing a bunch of marketing to get those coins out there, using bots to push the videos on YouTube. This even gets honest YouTubers who do really care about you. They see the views they get when they do a video on Bitcoin, and then they do some dumb coin, and that one goes off purely because the bots and the organized crime people pushed it. And even honest YouTubers who really do care about you will get suckered into making all these crappy videos on altcoins and selling you on projects, because it's good for them. Do you see how dangerous this whole system is?
What I see as good is that some crypto YouTubers are questioning what they're doing. Like, wait a minute — if I tell all my followers about this altcoin and they get all ripped off in it, even when I profit, is that something I feel good about? Some crypto YouTubers are putting out better quality content, while others will do any clickbait. I've blocked so many crypto YouTubers from my feed because you do one single, just total clickbait video, and I'm never watching you again — a video with a headline that is blatantly wrong just to get people to click on it. You'd be amazed how often that happens. At least for me, I can often tell the difference. But what if you're new to this and you can't tell the difference between a blatantly false, misleading headline and narrative versus the truth? I go into a video and I'm like, that's probably not right — I've been in this so long, my instinct says that's not true, and I go look up the facts relative to what they said. Turns out their headline is blatantly wrong. And I'm like, wow.
I've blocked other YouTubers, too. I saw one YouTuber — and I'm not going to mention this person specifically, to give them the opportunity to change, because if I show them and what they're doing, then I'm promoting them and reinforcing that they'll keep doing it. Maybe they'll watch this and change. I've seen one crypto YouTuber specifically where all they do is talk about how all these altcoins are going to go up.
The people selling you their portfolios do not hold what they shill
Then they sell you a program where you can see their portfolio, and it turns out they are not holding any of the stuff they are shilling. They do not have it in their own portfolio. They tell you it could do these massive multipliers, and they are not holding it themselves. And this was a significant cost to join. Not like a nine-dollar-a-month membership, this was a real chunk of money to get in. I went in and thought, wow, this is disgusting. The vast majority of people do not even watch the program they paid for, but they do watch the misleading videos that pulled them in.
Then you see other people selling courses, promising insider information, charging thousands of dollars. Now, I am not talking about someone like Joe Parys. Joe Parys has a five-hundred-dollar course. You get into his Discord and he has twenty hours of video showing what he has learned in crypto, and he shows you how he made his profits. That is an advanced-level course with real substance behind it. I am talking about the Bitcoin maxis. Bitcoin maxis selling thousands and thousands of dollars of crypto courses that cost thousands of dollars, when they make it completely clear that they are a Bitcoin maxi. If they are a Bitcoin maxi, you really do not need to buy a course like the one they offer. They will sell it however they can, but it is obvious this is worthless. Almost all their portfolio is Bitcoin. Almost all they believe in is Bitcoin. And then they sell you a course for a thousand dollars, and people buy it. I want to try to help people. I want to show what is going on behind the scenes.
Sponsorships and the money that never shows on screen
Then there are other crypto YouTubers who have so many sponsors in their videos that it is annoying. You can hardly sort through the real information. And then there are all these altcoins that will pay big money. You would be shocked at how much money you can get to do this. Some of these cryptos would pay me ten thousand dollars or more to show you their altcoin, and I will not do it. I literally will not do it. I would rather ask my wife for money to go buy the groceries than take ten thousand dollars for some stupid coin and sell it to you. They ask, and I say no. Well, you should say no too. I ignore their emails.
Now picture that across the whole crypto space. When you see crypto YouTubers taking sponsorships, sometimes they believe in what they are selling you, and you will often see repeated sponsorships on the same crypto if they really believe in it. Other times, you have to think: if somebody offered you twenty thousand dollars to make a video that takes you thirty minutes, to talk about how great an altcoin is, would you do it? Even if you thought the crypto was garbage, would you take twenty thousand dollars to compromise your integrity? That is a little lucrative, isn't it? Now imagine all those sponsored crypto YouTubers, all those sponsorships generating that initial first impression. Then you have other people just copying what originally was sponsored content. Then you get people liking something that they have literally been paid to like. And here is the tell: if a crypto has enough money to pay you big money to sponsor you, it is centralized enough that it is not actually really decentralized at all.
Crypto YouTube is a dirty game, and I show up every day trying to clean it up a little bit. I am proud of that. I have talked with crypto YouTubers who have started to question things. I talked with Joe, and he said he is rethinking how he does his videos, rethinking how this works out over the long term.
To be fair, I helped build this game
To be fair, I started out pumping Bitcoin, and then, because people did not use to pump altcoins that much, I was one of the first people to make a habit of pumping altcoins. I rationalized it as, whoops, I missed this in my research, but it was really a pump and dump. I was one of the first people to start massive altcoin pump and dumps on YouTube at large scale. I ran ads that went out to millions of people on crypto YouTube. So to be fair, in some ways I have just been doing this longer, and maybe I have had a chance to grow up a bit more. Most of the crypto YouTubers you see, especially a lot of these channels that show absolute junk coins, have not been doing this that long. They just made a new channel a year ago, a couple of years ago, and all they care about, I will say it, all they care about is making money, and they will say anything to get that money in the door. To be fair, that is just kind of the human default.
Why do they think a coin is going to be a hit? Why do they think it is going to hundred-x? Are they actually holding that crypto themselves? I show my actual portfolio on my channel. Go back a few videos and you can see exactly what I am holding, the dollar values of it, the percentages in my portfolio. I make it clear this is what I am doing. That is what I did, and that is what grew my channel so fast. I bought all these junk coins, and you all essentially paid me to buy them. I essentially got all those junk coins given to me for free, and many of you lost money in those junk coins while I got them for free.
Once you see the system, you can watch it carefully
Once you understand how this system works on YouTube, you can become careful about what videos you watch and what the person's motivations are. Everyone has their biases. I watch Invest Answers a lot, and the majority of his portfolio is Bitcoin, then he has some ETH, and a little bit of Solana. So naturally the bias in all his videos is toward Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. I know that, and I keep it in mind when I am processing what he is doing. That is how I want to teach you to do it too, to watch what someone says and weigh it against what they hold.
I show up every day hoping to build a world full of wealthy people, and in some ways to make up for what I did before, and to help you understand the game that is being played. I hope I can help smash the delusion that you are going to beat the game, because I have seen your portfolios, and most of you are getting wrecked. The worst part is you are putting a bunch of time and energy into getting wrecked. In my experience, the simplest strategy is that you dollar-cost average into Bitcoin. It takes almost no time, and you are probably going to be better off for it.
If you want more from me, I put out a couple of videos a day here to provide whatever I can that I think will help you as a crypto investor, and I keep a dedicated crypto reviews channel where I consistently go through altcoins I think are terrible, and occasionally I find one that is all right. You can see that whole body of work in my Crypto Reviews playlist. And if you want to go deeper with me, the best way to work with me on all of this today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, a community of people who really care, where the scammers and spammers get filtered out and we can actually talk honestly about what is going on.
Thanks for reading. I will get to work on another one for you.