My friends, you're about to hear the huge lies that crypto YouTubers are telling you that are the main reason you're getting ripped off on all these altcoins. You're putting all this time into crypto, it's confusing, it's difficult, and I'm going to cut through all that and give it to you straight. You need to know the lies that are being told to you so that you can learn how to research the truth and get an accurate picture of what's really happening in crypto. This is all my own opinion and experience, not financial advice, but it's the picture I wish someone had given me years ago.
First, your mental defenses
Before I tell you each lie itself, the first thing we need to work through are your mental defenses, because you're not going to like the idea. If you're like me, you're not going to like the idea that you've been getting lied to by almost everybody in crypto constantly, because what does that say about you? Well, what it might say about you is that you believe most people in the world are good, that they have your best interest in mind, that most people are trying to do their best and look out for other people. And that is true. I believe 95% of the world is people who are loving, caring, safe drivers, considerate, and want the best for you.
But what about those other 5%? The problem is, those 5% are very attracted to being crypto YouTubers. Why do people get into making crypto YouTube videos and then have all these tier lists with coins on them? I can tell you myself. Why did I become a crypto YouTuber 10 years ago? Because I saw that was the easiest way to make money for me. That was my first consideration, and it was only a secondary consideration what happened to everybody else. So I was one of the first big crypto YouTubers, and I can tell you from experience: I was thinking of me first, and I did very well for myself, and I was thinking of my audience second. In fact, my audience often annoyed me, because they'd lose money watching the videos I put up, and then they'd complain, and that annoyed me because I was making lots of money. What's wrong with them? They must be doing it wrong.
The two ways crypto YouTubers lie to you
So you don't have to take it from me alone, but I'm telling you that all these crypto YouTubers are lying, and there are two main ways they're lying. One is that they actually know better and are blatantly, in your face, lying to you. They're getting paid to lie to you, or they simply only care about getting themselves another house, another car, and a private island, and they don't care what happens to you at all. They're saying absolutely anything to get you to click their videos, watch their videos, buy the cryptos they're telling you about, go to the exchanges, copy-trade them, buy their courses, and so on.
The second reason people are lying is through incompetence, presenting themselves as more of an expert than they really are. To me, if you're really competent at this point in crypto, you probably found out about the Internet Computer and saw how the technology is fundamentally different. In my view it's the biggest change in crypto we've ever seen. It has the biggest research and development team behind it, and to me it has, in Dominic Williams, the founder who's like the Steve Jobs of crypto. He's absolutely the superstar of crypto. If people are not talking about the Internet Computer, and they're presenting all these other altcoins to you, and they're not doing it on purpose so to speak, then it's through incompetence. And they should make that clear and say, well, I just really don't know what I'm doing at all in crypto, and I'm just trying to do my best here. That's how the bigger picture works to me.
Now, if you can dig into the specific lies I'm telling you about, you can easily research and verify these things for yourself. I've put more of this kind of testing into my breakdown of what I found when I tested the top 100 crypto YouTubers, if you want to see how widespread this really is.
Why I think I'm different
And if you're wondering, well, how am I different? I quit crypto YouTube because I was disgusted with my own dishonesty. I punished myself financially and got myself into the worst situation I've ever been in financially. The only reason I came back to crypto YouTube was to try and be an honest voice that cares about you first, and then if I get something out of it, it's just the minimum for getting by.
I turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars a month of sponsorships that I could get if I would just take five or ten thousand and a picture of myself to push you an altcoin. If I would take an exchange partnership and send you off to copy-trade me, I could make hundreds of thousands more dollars a month than I do. But no amount of money is worth going to sleep hating yourself. I know that from experience.
My simplified crypto tier list
So let's dig into the actual lies and their specifics. Often these tier-list charts, in and of themselves, are putting a whole bunch of these lies together in one single image. Here's a simplified version of my own crypto tier list. To me, Internet Computer Protocol is the absolute best in crypto. Bitcoin and Ethereum are probably second best in a lot of ways, because of the network effect and how many people are using them. And then most of the rest of these cryptos, in my opinion, are going to zero. That's what it looks like to me, and that's based on what we've seen in the past. So let's get into more of these specific lies so that you can understand and spot them yourself.
Lie #1: Cryptos are decentralized
One of the biggest lies is that cryptos are decentralized. Almost nothing in crypto is actually decentralized, not even Bitcoin and Ethereum. Let me give you a clear indicator of what I'm saying with some cold hard data: the Bitcoin rich list. Look at it and tell me Bitcoin is decentralized. About 0.03% of the wallets hold the majority of the coins. That's a lot of zeros and a percent sign. What does that mean? It means that for every 10,000 Bitcoin addresses, three of those addresses hold roughly 59% of the entire supply. Do you think a decentralized system would have 0.03% of people holding more than half the total supply? And if you bump it up by a factor of 10, that 0.03% holds around 82% of the supply. This has been the case since 2009. Tell me that's decentralized.
Bitcoin is the number one crypto people are talking about right now, and this is just the tokens themselves. Bitcoin mining is very centralized too, with a handful of miners and mining pools controlling the majority of the hash rate. And especially with these Bitcoin miner stocks, these ETFs are centralizing Bitcoin even more. But where do people actually trade Bitcoin? They trade it on centralized exchanges that have proven untrustworthy in the past and have stolen huge amounts of people's money, all the way back to Mt. Gox, which has continued to happen over and over again. So there's almost nothing in crypto that's truly decentralized.
Even some of these coins or tokens that do have a decentralized, quote, "fair launch" — often a BS narrative — the way you access them is not decentralized at all. Internet Computer Protocol is the only crypto you can use to put your website on it, and the website is a key point of centralization. If you're actually trading these coins, if you're using these apps on a website, it's not hosted on the blockchain itself. I go deeper on this in why decentralization is the biggest lie in crypto, because once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Lie #2: These things are "built on crypto"
This is one of the other big lies in crypto: that things are built on crypto. Almost nothing outside of Internet Computer Protocol is actually built on crypto in any meaningful way. All these crypto games are a fat lie right in your face. They're telling you, oh, look, this game's built on this chain. No, it's not. There's a little token, which has a tiny amount of data on a chain, whatever chain it is. And then the website, the app itself, the pictures, the videos, the NFTs — everything except just the basic NFT data — all that stuff's built on centralized cloud hosting for the most part.
So you're going around getting sold on these apps, and you're seeing these people who are just disgustingly dishonest promoting a whole bunch of these things at once, because in most cases they've been given huge amounts of money to do so. And then you all are FOMOing into these, and they're not even really built on crypto. In fact, many of these crypto games are more expensive for a company to build, maintain, and keep secure than a regular game. And this is why what happens? They get hacked, their bridges get hacked, the token goes to zero, the supply is insanely centralized. Outside of the Internet Computer, nothing in any meaningful way is actually built on chain.
Now some of you are thinking, Bitcoin Ordinals — Bitcoin Ordinals are on chain. Yes, you're wrong. The actual little tiny JPEGs are on chain, but how do you access Bitcoin Ordinals? You go to a website that's centralized, that decides exactly how they want to pull the Ordinals from the Bitcoin blockchain, and then you trade through them. That's not decentralized. There's a single owner, a single point of failure. And these BRC-20 tokens are the newest blatant ripoff lie scam in the space, because in every place you're going through complete centralized points of failure.
Now the Internet Computer is different to me, because it's the only thing you can actually build the entire full stack on, and that's why in my little tier list, the Internet Computer is the single thing that I'm invested in in any meaningful way.
Lie #3: Hiding what they actually hold
To be honest, you also need to be transparent, so I'll tell you exactly how much Internet Computer I've got, because you can also spot the dishonesty when people don't tell you what they actually hold. Many of these crypto creators are telling you about coins they don't hold, or coins they've just been given in exchange for promoting them. I bought my Internet Computer. I have around 3,000 ICP, and nobody paid me to get into the Internet Computer and start talking about it. I got into it because I wanted to give you the best information possible.
You all kept scheduling one-on-one video calls with me back when I talked about a whole bunch of different crypto coins, and you kept asking, Jerry, which one's actually the best? So I did hundreds and hundreds of hours of research, compared all kinds of altcoins, and I found that the Internet Computer's technology is so far beyond anything else that everything else is dial-up internet and the Internet Computer is fiber optic cable at record speeds and latency. Everything else became uninteresting to me.
Any crypto creator who is not looking into the technology on the Internet Computer, who is not addressing the things it can do that nothing else can do, who's not talking about this a significant amount of the time — because to me it's a huge deal, with the massive team behind DFINITY, the largest research and development team in blockchain — they are, in my opinion, either being dishonest (which is the case in the majority of the biggest YouTubers; they've been paid not to talk about it) or showing incompetence. You're not talking about what I consider the most exciting technology in crypto, the first crypto that has both a Bitcoin and an Ethereum layer 2 on the same infrastructure, and people are getting real excited about that.
And then the liars about the Internet Computer will say, well, it's centralized, but they'll never mention how all the other cryptos they talk about are as centralized or more centralized than the Internet Computer, except those other cryptos don't have any useful technology behind them. They're just a copy and paste of Bitcoin or Ethereum with a couple of small tweaks made.
Lie #4: You need to trade, and you need a lot of altcoins
Now let's get into some more big lies. These huge lies are often founded on the idea that you need to trade to make money, and that you need a lot of different altcoins to be smart, to be diversified. Because, well, if I show you a list with all these things, I don't know which one of these is really going to do it, which one is actually honest, so if you just get all of them, the ones that work out will make it worth it. But if you look at the historical numbers, in my view 99.9% of cryptos are blatant losers over the long term.
And this kicks into another huge lie, one of the biggest lies in crypto: everybody telling you that you need to buy during the bear market and take profits during the bull. The people who keep selling you on these four-year cycles, telling you to think in cycles, to get overly hyped up during the bull market and sell and dump on everybody else right when they're excited, and then buy low during the bear. But often the prices never seem to be low enough, and then they all of a sudden go up, and you can't even tell where the creator actually bought themselves.
Where I actually bought ICP
I can tell you where I bought Internet Computer Protocol. I did buy at the absolute bottom. Almost nobody except some of these seed investors has bought the Internet Computer lower than I bought it. Over the last year, I bought a bunch of my Internet Computer under three dollars, right around three dollars, and I told everybody, very openly and transparently: hey, I just went all in on the Internet Computer, because to me this is the best technology in all of crypto.
Part of me didn't even want to tell everybody, because I know that with the size of my audience, when I tell everybody, well, this is going to happen. So many of the people who actually find the best information in crypto don't even tell you about it until it's too late. Why? Because they want to load their bags up down low, and then once they've got their bags absolutely loaded, then let's talk about it up high, and then it's too late, and they're selling right when they're talking about it.
So what is the truth?
So what is the truth? The truth, as I see it, is that most cryptos are extremely centralized, almost nothing is actually built on crypto, you do not need to trade to make money, and you will be better off having one single altcoin you've thoroughly researched than having a bunch of altcoins you know nothing about. In almost every case, you'll be better off to dollar-cost average into the one altcoin you've found to be the very best. That's my opinion, not a recommendation for your money. If you want to get honest with yourself about how you're really doing, I wrote more about that in getting honest about your crypto investing, and you can keep up with all my coin reviews in my Money playlist on YouTube.
Lie #5: You need to research all these altcoins
Another big lie is that you need to research and know about all these other altcoins, when to me all you need to research right now is Internet Computer Protocol. And if there's anything better than that, tell me about it. Every time, you all have told me, well, Jerry, this looks just like the Internet Computer. It takes me about 10 minutes to look through it and find where, oh, it doesn't actually host stuff on chain, it's on IPFS — an absolute dumpster. And you're saying, oh, this is like ICP. No, it's not.
But please, if you think something's like ICP, tell me about it. In most cases I will show you very quickly how you are obviously wrong, just by jumping into the documentation and showing that it's not even built on chain, and therefore it's not like ICP; how it doesn't have a Bitcoin and Ethereum layer 2 already on it, and therefore it's not like ICP; how it does not have the biggest development team in blockchain with the most talented people, and therefore it's not like ICP; how it doesn't actually have clear user growth on it like ICP; how it doesn't have staking rewards like ICP. And therefore it's not like ICP.
But please, take a shot, because the only reason I found ICP is that one of you came onto my YouTube one day, about a year ago, and said, you need to look at ICP, Jerry. And I did. It took me a while to understand it. But now all you need to do is learn about Internet Computer Protocol. Once you find out about ICP, in my opinion everything else absolutely sucks by comparison. And I think we could easily be into the twenty-plus dollar range in just a few months — that's my personal opinion and hope, not a promise — because this is the only crypto I know of where, when you really understand it, many of you, as I did, are dumping your entire bag of everything else to go all in on this. That's because nowhere else can you put a gigabyte of data on chain for five dollars. Nowhere else. That's Internet Computer Protocol. Once you research it, you can see what a lie almost all of crypto is.
Lie #6: You need to buy expensive courses
Another lie is that you need to buy these expensive courses to really learn the truth. I have one-on-one calls on my website for two hundred dollars an hour, and those get scheduled pretty consistently, but honestly, I try to just put the best information out so you don't have to schedule a call with me. Just look up the Internet Computer. You don't need to talk with me, you don't need to buy anything from me. Research the Internet Computer for yourself, actually use it, try using the technology, create a wallet — I've got free tutorials. You don't need to give me anything.
Lie #7: Everything's going to multiply in value
The last big lie we'll address is that everything is going to multiply in value. In the short term, sometimes things do all multiply in value. But to me it's blatantly dishonest if you're presenting all these things that are multiplying in value without also giving the bigger picture. And here's the bigger picture. Let me compare it to a casino.
I used to hit the craps table pretty hard in a casino. You've got your odds on various things you bet on. You've got your pass line, which is about one-to-one odds, then you've got some lower-chance odds, like betting on specific dice rolls. The casino makes it very clear exactly what you get out of hitting those. The pass line is one-to-one: you bet a thousand dollars on the pass line and you pass, you get a thousand dollars back; if you lose, you lose a thousand dollars. On some of the others you can win bigger — put a thousand on, get seven thousand back.
But think about the roulette wheel for a minute. If you want to bet on double zero, the odds are about one in thirty-something that you're going to hit it. And while it's clear that double zero could 30x your money, it's also clear, when you go to the casino, that most of the time double zero is a stupid bet and you're going to lose your money on it. I've done it plenty of times. I'd even get cute and bet the line between zero and double zero, so if it lands on either of the green zeros, I win — and most of the time you lose your money doing that.
These charts, and all the multipliers they're showing you, in almost every case are a big lie, because what if it was put in the context of gambling? Like, yeah, you might 50x your money on a crypto if you get in at the right time and get out at the right time, which almost none of you do. The most likely scenario is that you are going to lose money on any particular crypto you invest in.
Even ICP: all the ways you can lose money
That goes for even the Internet Computer. There are a bunch of ways to lose money even if I'm completely right about it. For example, many of you are holding your Internet Computer on an exchange. If an exchange gets hacked, if an exchange gets attacked by a hostile government, if an exchange loses its money due to its own incompetence, you will lose your Internet Computer even if the price does appreciate. And that goes for all your other cryptos too.
Not only that, but if you transfer your Internet Computer to the wrong address, you'll lose your money. If you lose access to your wallet, even after you've taken it off an exchange, you will lose it. If you accidentally lock it up for too long, you will not be able to access it for eight years, and you might pass before you can access it. (Now, you can sell your whole account in that case.) But do you get what I'm saying? There's a ton of ways to lose your money in crypto, and the truth needs to make clear that most of you, most of the time, are losing money in crypto. That's the cold hard facts. I've told enough of you over the years to know that.
Why I qualify myself to make these videos
Now some of you say, well, I've made money in crypto 10 years in a row, and that's why I qualify myself as capable of making these videos, because in every single kind of crypto market, no matter what was happening, I've made money. And yes, the first few years it was because I was utterly ruthless and selfish, like many of these other creators, and I profited off of my creation. Then I still made money even when I quit creating crypto videos for years, and I've come back and I make money now in a very transparent way by showing you the Internet Computer, which to me is the only thing worth investing in today in crypto, and that's why I've got all my money in it. This is my portfolio.
I think you should demand of anybody you watch — if you want to know whether they're telling the truth or not — show me what you actually hold. Maybe they've bought some trash coin, but at least if they're all in on it themselves and they're telling you it's going to 50x and they're all in on it, well, maybe you could believe that. But if they've got one of these charts up and you can't tell what they're actually holding, and they're just talking about it to get you to click on the video, come on.
Stop getting lied to and ripped off
So I want y'all to stop getting lied to and ripped off, because it's annoying me. It annoys me to see you all lose your life savings because you watched videos promising you huge gains and you didn't realize that most of the time those videos are really going to cause you to lose money. And some of you who are even smart, who have managed to win the game — you've won because other people lost. You're playing a zero-sum game with these garbage coins, where, yeah, you bought some trash coin before everybody else did and you exited and dumped on all those suckers' heads. That's nothing to be proud of. You just made a bunch of other people poor, because all of you were playing in the mud and you got out first before you really got dirty.
Internet Computer Protocol, in my view, has technology that can make Web3 a reality, that can make a platform anyone can build on, that can make the entire internet more secure. It has real technology that I believe can actually make the world a better place, just like fiber optic cable internet gave us all the stuff I dreamed of as a kid — instant multiplayer online games, watching any movie you want immediately. (It's also had some downsides too.)
So I hope this is helpful for you, because I want you to be rich, I want you to make smart decisions in crypto, to really think for yourself, and to not get sucked in by all the lies. Many of you complain to me about the liars, the other crypto creators who are doing this crap. Stop watching them. Stop following them. Block their videos from your feed. Ignore them. If some car salesman at some other dealership is lying to their customers, I'm not going to go complain to the dealership I'm at about it. It's not relevant; it doesn't matter.
And demand transparency about the person, not just the coins. I'm transparent about my life — I tell you how I got sober, I tell you my stories as a police officer, my whole life story, how I met my wife. You should demand that anybody you watch really presents themselves fully to you. Don't watch fake people who you can't really get to know. That's, unfortunately, your average crypto YouTuber. They just haven't got caught yet, or it's not on video. If you'd like to keep going down this rabbit hole with me, you're welcome to join my community and ask me anything directly. I'd love for you to make smart, honest decisions and keep more of your money.