The Solution: An NNS Marketing Fund
It's time to stop complaining about the ICP marketing and to do something about it. The number one complaint that is all around ICP is about the marketing, the visibility, that nobody talks about it, that nobody uses it, that the price is bad, that the crypto media ignores it. But now we have a solution — I have created at least the framework, mentally, for a solution. I'm grateful I did a video about this before, and this post will deepen that idea and show you the resistance that is out there. The solution is that the Network Nervous System should be creating its own marketing fund. I'm grateful a community member said this discussion deserves some serious attention in the ICP community. Seven days ago I published a 27-minute video saying ICP should print tokens to pay for its own marketing. This is a solution, and we need to get this idea in front of the Network Nervous System as a real proposal. Ideally, DFINITY would make it, or I can make the proposal. Either way, we have a clear solution to our marketing, and I don't see another way out that is going to work very well in the future.
Here's how it works. The Network Nervous System prints tokens, and those tokens sit in a marketing pool of funds. Every day, the NNS creates a tiny amount of tokens — it could be a few hundred ICP, maybe a thousand ICP. We could easily have a thousand ICP a day sit in a fund for marketing. Then people would make proposals to the Network Nervous System against that fund in exchange for doing marketing. People would vote on those proposals, and if the votes pass, the funds go to the address. This would need to be advanced enough that I could make a motion proposal, but someone at DFINITY would probably need to make everything line up, because this would be a new category for the NNS.
The Real Problem: A Mindset Problem
Here's the problem, though. It's the comments. It's people thinking like this: "Stop with the ideas that require new minting. We should stop minting." In my view, that comment lacks any level of critical thinking. It's just an impulse reaction — you have not thought at all about this. These comments are indicative that we have a mindset problem in this community: people do not understand basic business or marketing, and the people who do either didn't comment or didn't put anything in.
Look at this comment: "Marketing's goal is to find buyers when it's time to offload tokens." No, it's not. And then: "The problem is not no marketing. The problem is no one's pumping the token to show it's valuable." That IS marketing. Why do you think a token like Solana — which, in my opinion, has technology that isn't sustainable or genuinely useful to humanity — got so big? Same thing with XRP, in my view. Same thing with most of the top tokens. Hyperliquid, as I see it, has a mediocre product that's built mostly with centralized tech and markets itself as a decentralized exchange when it is not, in fact, meaningfully decentralized. How do you think something like that gets a gigantic market cap? It is marketing — hence the term market cap. The problem IS no marketing. That is the problem. How do you think all these videos get views on all these other tokens? Because they've paid for them. They've paid people a lot of money to shill tokens over and over again, and then people copy them. Why would somebody pump a token up if they weren't paid to? Why would somebody like me, who could make a ton of money shilling a bunch of other coins, make content about ICP — except for having some integrity and care for other people, which is not most content creators' first concern?
Then there's this one: "Backers who can pump the price up, marketing that pulls people in, and offloading generates profit." What? And look here: "There's no marketing. Marketing in crypto is useless." In my experience, this is the opposite of the truth. How do you think things like Shiba Inu got to be huge, when the coin is just an ERC-20 token that is, in my opinion, fundamentally completely useless? It was guerrilla marketing. That's how it got up there — it was sending a bunch of coins to Vitalik Buterin. Then this: "Everyone who sees ads that aren't related to their bags will ignore them." This is another misconception. People think that marketing is just paying for ads. No — it's paying creators who have organic reach, like me, to make content. That's how most of the marketing in crypto is done: paying creators who have an organic reach to shill your tokens. And the ads for Solana, Base, and others work — that's why they have huge user numbers. This is the opposite of a bad idea, and this kind of thinking is holding us back.
Yes, We Have Something to Market
Another comment, talking about the Brave browser, asked: do we actually have something to market? Yes. We have the most advanced technology in crypto. We have infrastructure that could save huge amounts of money for companies — like web development companies. We should do marketing to web development companies. We should be paying people who have a web developer audience to introduce them to ICP. How about this: give $2,000 to a YouTuber who has a bunch of web development agencies following them. They do a video. You might onboard 10 or 20 web development agencies that bring all their clients onto the ICP infrastructure — that would be hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars a month in ICP that would be bought and burned to pay the hosting bill. Someone said the building is far more important. Okay — how do you get people building? You need to bring people's awareness that this exists. People don't know that there's a better option than what they're using. People don't know that there's a better alternative to Shopify or WordPress by building on ICP.
There was one great comment I was genuinely entertained by, and it's exactly right: even if you minted an amount of ICP like 3,000 a month, that's tiny — that's nothing, it wouldn't even be noticed. We could probably mint a hundred thousand dollars worth of ICP every month — 40,000 to 50,000 ICP a month at the current price — and give it out for marketing, and that wouldn't affect the price. Even if all of us took all the money and sold it immediately, a hundred thousand dollars of sell pressure on the ICP price is absolutely nothing. But if we had $100,000 put into marketing every month, the price could go up off of that marketing every month. I estimate the price would be anywhere from 10 to 50 cents higher for ICP if we had been properly funding marketing the entire time through the NNS.
What We've Already Lost
I would not have quit in 2025 if I had been getting a proper paycheck for the work I'm doing — and I'll show you the numbers on that work in a minute. If I had continued doing videos for nine months, instead of deleting all my channels because I was getting a crappy paycheck for full-time work, then we would probably have millions and millions more ICP that people wouldn't have sold, or that people would have bought. And I'm not just talking about myself. We lost James Allen, whose videos showed millions of times on YouTube for ICP. We lost him as a creator, and you can say whatever you want about the quality of his videos: he bought 10,000 ICP. He brought people into the community. He kept people in the community who were here. He was a unique voice in the ecosystem. And he got angry when he did a whole bunch of videos and there was no support for it. The NNS could have easily given him $10,000, and we probably would have had hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, in net ICP transactions that would have resulted from that. When James Allen went to Kaspa and started FUDding ICP, I imagine people probably sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of ICP. This is what so many are not getting about the marketing.
And I appreciate Adam here — Adam has helped fund me more than anybody else, because Adam voted on my proposals for something like five different coins, which gave me thousands of dollars. And many of those coins have just crashed and gone to zero. Why? Marketing. Because you can't just launch coins, expect the team to sell every month to pay for themselves, have nobody market it, and somehow the price goes up. And how about the claim that ICP needs to be useful? It IS useful. I'm not a developer, and I can tell you it is useful — it is fantastic. And yes, I would love to give my bags a genuine purpose.
This Is What Marketing Looks Like
So let me show you what marketing looks like. Look at my channel analytics. In the last month alone, I've driven 700,000 thumbnail impressions. While writing this, I asked ChatGPT a question in the background: if I was getting paid to shill some crypto coin, and I was driving one and a half million impressions a month on YouTube, with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views across all kinds of platforms, how much would a coin pay me to do that for them every month? I asked for different estimates — a meme coin, a crypto exchange, a big coin, and so on. How many thousands of dollars a month would that be worth?
While ChatGPT calculated that, here are my real numbers. My videos for ICP on my ICP channel have shown 700,000 times in the last month — 77,000 views with an average view duration of five minutes. That is very valuable work. On top of that, I have another channel with 600,000 impressions and an average view duration of four minutes. On top of that, I have an X account, @JerryBanfieldIC — I rebranded, so my other account has vlogs — and this account has driven 500,000 impressions promoting ICP, with videos like my ranking of the top 50 cryptos by how easy they are to fake, where I put ICP right in there. One single video got 13,000 impressions. And I'm FUDding other coins even as they go to all-time highs because of their marketing.
Yes, this is a rant — absolutely a rant. But we have the tools at our disposal for better results. We have the tools right now to get some serious marketing and attention. That's what's beautiful: this technology is here and it can help us, but we need to get out of our own way with dumb narratives about how bad inflation is. In my opinion, that's just a stupid narrative — blatantly ridiculous. If you want better in life, you need to do better. You can't just operate at this low level of thinking and then complain that the world's not on your side. So let me show you what ChatGPT said my work is worth.
What My Work Is Actually Worth
If a crypto project wanted to buy the same kind of sustained attention I'm describing — hundreds of thousands of actual views, millions of impressions, repeated discussion — look at how much the AI says this is worth. This is how much other people are getting paid to do exactly this. And you're telling me I should get a few hundred in ad revenue a month? I've made at least $1,000 this month from people scheduling calls about ICP, but look at this: ChatGPT says the value of my work is worth $20,000 to $40,000 a month. That's the kind of money these other influencers are getting to shill coins. That's why nobody's talking about ICP — because almost nobody like me, who could make $20,000 to $40,000 a month if I'd stop shilling ICP and start shilling other coins, is willing to turn that down. This is the money I'm turning down by having some integrity and trying to give the best value with my videos, saying: look, here's the best technology. This is why ICP has a visibility problem. The other people who can get the results I'm getting are taking the paychecks from the coins that are paying them.
If you want to dive into the details, you can see the different levels of projects: a smaller legit crypto project, $10,000 to $25,000 a month. An established protocol, $15,000 to $30,000. A major L1, $20,000 to $40,000. A crypto exchange, $10,000 to $25,000, potentially $25,000 to $75,000 total. Are these numbers accurate? Yes — because I've talked to other crypto YouTubers, and this is the kind of money they make. And they can't make it with ICP being in every video. Some of them I have actually talked into putting ICP in their videos and in their thumbnails. Some of the largest crypto YouTubers actually talk about ICP — I did that. Nobody else did that. I talked to them on the phone or on Zoom, I explained ICP to them, they bought ICP, and they still put it in their thumbnails. Who put that together? Me. That's who.
And crypto exchanges — do you understand how much money I could make if I went and community-farmed and shilled a crypto exchange? I could make $10,000 to $20,000 as a base, as an affiliate, and then $25,000 up to $100,000 a month on some of them, shilling an exchange and copy-trading on it. Immediately. And meme coins: if I wanted to shill some garbage meme coin, they'd probably pay me $25,000 to $70,000 a month to get results like mine. Now, how sustainable would that be? Probably not very. But if I shilled a meme coin for a few months and made $25,000 to $75,000, that's more money than I'm making all year right now doing ICP content. And some of these coins, with a very aggressive launch, pay $50,000 to $100,000 for these kinds of results. This is what people are getting. When you see people shilling coins over and over again, expect that this is the kind of money they're getting in the background. And then you wonder why people aren't covering ICP? Because nobody's paying this much to the people who have the audience.
Here's the estimate ChatGPT gave: conservatively, what I do is worth $15,000-plus a month. Fair commercial value, $25,000 to $35,000. Premium, $40,000 to $50,000. And you know what? I'd be happy with something like $5,000 a month. I can at least pay my rent with $5,000 a month. And $5,000 a month would be about 2,000 to 2,500 ICP a month. You're telling me that's not worth it?
What I'm Considering Instead
So let me show you what I'm considering instead, because I'm going to do what it takes to pay my bills. I'm not going to sit here and end up moving in with my mother. I did a video yesterday talking about ICP and the war on the crypto empire — ICP versus the crypto empire, which side are you on? Well, you know what? If I don't get paid properly, I'm switching sides. And I'm not saying that everything besides ICP is necessarily part of a "crypto empire" or a bad token. But there are things I could do. I'm not just going to sit here and shill ICP every day for free indefinitely — for free or for nearly free, that's not going to happen.
Here's what I could do instead. MaxFi is absolutely printing money right now. They paid me $500 to do one video with them. It took two hours of my time — that's $250 an hour. Not only that, but they have a referral program. So far I haven't earned any referrals from the YouTube link, but on MaxFi I get 3% of the trading fees forever. If someone comes on there and generates $100,000 in trading fees — which one single person could easily do — that'd be $3,000 to me.
I have my Crypto Reviews channel, where I've been shilling ICP every single day. You know what I could do on that channel? I could just start doing MaxFi tutorials every day. I could start showing off my results — like the video I did where a $79 liquidity pool earned hundreds of dollars in fees. They're showing gigantic APRs on there. If I went all in on MaxFi on that channel, instead of roasting other cryptos and promoting ICP, I could be making thousands of dollars a month. Instead of taking a loan against my ICP, if I just dumped some of my liquid ICP and put it into MaxFi, I could probably be making 100% to 500% APR, printing money, doing videos showing how I'm printing money, and referring people to MaxFi.
I'm thinking I'm going to split my strategy: I'll basically do my Internet Computer videos as a volunteer, but then I'm going to split the rest of my capital and start doing MaxFi. Because MaxFi has money to sponsor me every month. MaxFi has a referral program I can make serious money off of. I did MEXC's exchange referral program, and one guy — one guy who joined MEXC a few years ago — generated $1,500 for me. One single guy who traded a lot on MEXC. I hardly even talked about MEXC. It was a random link I threw in my video. One guy joined and generated $1,500. I logged into my MEXC account and thought, why do I have $1,500 in here? I didn't deposit anything. One guy generated a gigantic amount of fees over six months when I wasn't looking. MaxFi is a similar opportunity. It's blowing up, and the timing is right.
But if I want to do MaxFi, I've got to take time away from ICP. I need to stop criticizing all these other altcoins. I need to change my strategy. I need to stop marketing ICP with half of my content and instead focus on getting the affiliate link used and earning the most money possible with my positions, and then educating people to do DeFi. And here's the thing: if I do MaxFi, I end up having my money in all these different things — Arbitrum, or Base, PancakeSwap, Wrapped ETH. I end up putting my money in all kinds of other coins. I would need to become an investor, a holder, in all these other coins. And I'd prefer to just have my money in ICP. I appreciate MaxFi sponsoring, and I appreciate the opportunity.
The Choice the Community Faces
But if I don't get some significant income — enough to at least pay the rent — off ICP, and it shouldn't be dependent on me selling to the community either (people paying for calls with me should be extra; that takes extra of my time and should be a bonus), if I don't get a regular paycheck doing ICP videos, I'm going to start going at least 50% in on MaxFi and probably featuring MaxFi in all my ICP videos, which then creates a bit of a conflict of interest. I'm not going to sit here failing to make enough money every month and looking at having to leave this nice house I'm in and move in with my mom. I'm not going to do that.
So this is the choice you all face when you have attitudes like "stop with ideas that require new minting" and "please, no marketing." When you have attitudes like this, you don't deserve to keep getting results like mine. Somebody is going to pay me, and whoever pays me is the one I'm going to work for. ICP is not paying me. I could generate all this ad revenue elsewhere, and I guarantee I could generate probably two or three times as many calls if I featured MaxFi in every one of my videos — because people would be struggling on MaxFi and want to schedule a call with me to ask for help.
So this is it for me. I've done ICP content as a volunteer for two years. Bobby O has done it as a volunteer for much longer. Blockchain Pill is reasonable enough to realize he shouldn't be all in on ICP for his content either — he has a real business set up that's not all about ICP content. He does ICP content, but he's the one who introduced me to MaxFi, and he's done three videos with them. So this is it: either you pay for marketing — and the Network Nervous System should pay for it, or if DFINITY wants to, they can do that too — or I'm going to get paid what I'm worth elsewhere. I believe I'm worth tens of thousands of dollars a month. I'm going to get paid that, and whoever pays me is going to get my services. I'm not going to keep shilling ICP every day for free. I have enough ICP that I may even borrow against it so I can put some of that into MaxFi — I could borrow several thousand more dollars against my ICP, risk being liquidated if it went down, and put that money into MaxFi and just print.
You need to face reality. If you want the price to go up, you need to pay for marketing. If you just want to sit here and be miserable, complain about the price, and then say no to marketing — you reap what you sow. I'm prepared to do what I need to do to make a full-time income, and this is not cutting it.
Pay Every Creator Who Delivers
The way we're doing things is not cutting it. From what I see, I get the most reach, the most impressions, and the most views on my ICP videos. But I also expect the other creators should all get paid too — Blockchain Pill, Bobby O, Zero to Hero, Chris Yost. We should bring James Allen back, if he would even come back. Everybody doing ICP content who gets even a fraction of these results should be paid by the Network Nervous System, because it's worth something. Otherwise, we can just sit and wait for these UN partnerships to take years to move the price while everybody else in crypto does marketing, shills their coins, and rips people off. It's up to you.
This was definitely a rant and not financial advice — everything here is my own experience and belief. I'm holding ICP for now, but I'm thinking about moving my work wherever I can make the most money. Real talk. If you want to talk to me, join the Jerry Banfield Family on Skool and post there, or join my chat — the chat is where I can post the things I don't want to post on Skool, and I posted some funny stuff in there just last night.
Come on, those of you who want ICP to succeed: you need to stand up for the marketing cause. We need to get the marketing together, and we have all the tools to do it. It is up to us to get this done, to stop making excuses, and to stop complaining. The haters' voices need to be crowded out by the voices of reason and business. We're going to get ICP out there. We're going to compensate the people who are doing a good job, and we're going to find more people. The voices of reason, intelligence, and critical thinking need to drown out the naysayers, the non-thinkers, and the robotic thinking. You can see all of my ongoing coverage of the Internet Computer on my ICP Crypto playlist.
It is good business to pay for marketing. It is bad business to not pay for marketing and then complain that there's no marketing. Let's get it together. Come on.