I just had a call today, scheduled through my website jerrybanfield.com, with a guy who has been with us in ICP for years. He was saying, "Jerry, I'm losing faith. This isn't happening. It's been years and years. None of the announcements have mattered. Nobody's talking about this. Nobody on TikTok, nobody on YouTube is talking about this. I'm getting tired of it. I don't know how much longer I can take this."
What I said, after listening and understanding, was this: stop looking at ICP like it's going to save you — like ICP is going to just make everything else in your life work. Look at ICP like it's an opportunity and be grateful for that, but you need to run the rest of your life in a way that feels good for you, where ICP is just a bonus. If you're looking at ICP like it's going to rescue you from the rest of your life, then you're going to do what I did with Bitcoin in 2014. I talk about that a lot because it was a hard, painful lesson. When you could be a multimillionaire by doing nothing except buying some Bitcoin and then literally doing nothing, and you miss that — I don't want to miss that again with ICP.
So I'm going to address some of the things you may be thinking: nobody's using the technology, the technology doesn't matter, how long is this going to take, and what else do I do with my life in the meantime?
Nobody Is Talking About ICP? Let's Look at the Numbers
Let me address first the idea that nobody's talking about ICP, because this was one of the key things he said — nobody on TikTok is talking about ICP, nobody on YouTube is talking about ICP. Well, here's my ICP channel over the last four months: 2.9 million impressions. That means my videos have shown 2.9 million times. That's because of you and all the other people watching with you — thank you. And that's just on YouTube. That's just on one YouTube channel. My impressions are at all-time highs right now: 34,000 impressions on Monday, and it's Thursday. Most of those are unique people, so you can count on tens of thousands of people every day seeing my ICP videos just like this one.
But that's not the only channel I have. I have another crypto channel — my Crypto Reviews channel. On my ICP channel, I just hype ICP and talk to my ICP audience. The Crypto Reviews channel exists to get new people to find out about ICP by bashing all the other coins. It's a really clever marketing strategy, if I do say so myself, because if I put all those other cryptos on the ICP channel, it garbages it up. That channel has 1.7 million impressions. That's 4.6 million times in four months that my videos promoting ICP have shown to people. And people are watching: a 4:20 average view duration on one channel, five minutes on the other. Hundreds of thousands of views where people are spending five minutes on average watching.
And I'm seeing the results firsthand. One woman found one of my videos on my Crypto Reviews channel, came in and spent a couple hundred dollars to talk to me about ICP, and sold several of the other garbage coins in her Coinbase portfolio. We discussed how difficult it was for her to get rid of those other coins even though she hated them. So first of all, my videos alone are getting out to millions of impressions at least — which realistically means hundreds of thousands of people are seeing my videos about ICP five, ten, fifteen, twenty times. That is going out to a meaningful number of people.
The Savior Trap: My Bitcoin Lesson From 2014
Now let's talk about the savior thing, because what makes it difficult being in ICP is the time pressure. If you relax the time pressure, this is very easy. But if you're hoping ICP is going to bail you out financially — and I can relate, because I am literally taking cash advances and balance transfers on credit cards to pay my bills right now while sitting on $20,000 worth of ICP — the pressure is real. Do you think I'd love to see ICP 50X right now? Yes. I'd go from borrowing money to being a millionaire, and all ICP has to do is 50X. So I understand.
But what I also understand from being in Bitcoin in 2014 is that the easiest way to screw this up is to be short-sighted — to demand results. In 2014, when I had all that Bitcoin, I was in a better financial situation than I am now in terms of the amount of debt I had, and I had a wife who worked. But I was in a worse mindset. I had never made much money online. See, now I've made millions of dollars online. Now it's 12 years later. I know how much money I can make online. I know that as a content creator, I can just print money. I know it's up to me to make a business system that does not depend on ICP to bring money into my pockets — and I'll talk more about that in a minute, because it's all happening on jerrybanfield.com.
In 2014, I was in the right place, but I was impatient. Looking back now, you could have bought Bitcoin at any point in 2014 and gotten at least a 60X from where it's at today. At the time, it all seemed horrible. I started buying at $500 and $600, kept buying all the way down to $170, and managed to lose thousands of dollars trading in between. Then I got impatient and dumped all my Bitcoin at a small profit in the $200s, figuring I could buy lower again — which I have literally never, ever been able to do from where I sold it. I sold something like 40 Bitcoin at around $220 each, figuring, oh, I'll just buy more when it goes down. It never went down that low again. And it took years just to get back to where it was when I started. ICP — yes, it's been years since I went all in, but the pump could come at any time. Obviously, all I have is ICP. Obviously, this is not financial advice. Obviously, anything could happen.
Why I Have Conviction: I'm Using the Technology Myself
So what gives me conviction that ICP today is so similar to where Bitcoin was 12 years ago? I'm using the technology myself. This, to me, is what's different from almost everything else. Everything everybody else says is hearsay — maybe somebody else will use it. No. I'm using this tech myself, and it is a huge deal. This tech is not some minor improvement. This is not transactions being sent a few milliseconds faster. This tech is a game changer. It's so good that I've finally been able to build the business I want.
Today, I've been able to build my own version of OpenChat, and I've built it with AI using Claude Fable. It's shocking how good this is. I'm a tech geek, but the key is that I have Claude Fable plus the ICP blockchain. If I just had Claude Fable by itself, I wouldn't have the infrastructure to build this on. I wouldn't have the security, the easy login, and the crypto payments all built in. Trying to build this with Claude Fable on something else would suck. And ICP by itself, for years, has not done much because — as James Allen highlighted — the developer experience was a nightmare. Now AI eliminates the developer experience. It eliminates the need to be a developer, and ICP is the infrastructure to build on.
Let me show you what I mean — you don't have to have faith here. I have built my own version of OpenChat, and the first person to join it was really excited. On my website, there's no more OpenChat, no more someone else's terms and conditions. It's all mine, and the AI updates it. I decided I wanted emoji reactions. Mike posted a message, and I told Claude, I want emoji reactions. Claude was like, gotcha — emoji reactions added. It took five minutes, and it just cranked it out. I was like, oh my God. Then I said, I want a leaderboard. I want people to be able to show off how much money they've spent on my website, and I want it to count crypto payments and card payments. Claude was like, done — stick this webhook in Stripe, send that back to me from Stripe. Dude, this tech is crazy.
Yesterday, somebody asked if they could donate. So I said, I want a tip wall at jerrybanfield.com/tip — a tip wall where somebody can just come in, tip $5 on a card or with ICP, and send a message. The message gets shown on the tip wall, and there's an all-time leaderboard for the tips. I can rank them by newest tips or largest tips. I'm going to put tips all the way up to $1,000 — when somebody drops a $1,000 tip, they'll have the number one spot on the tip wall. And I'll make bigger tips possible. Do you understand how good this technology is? This is crazy what it can do. AI plus ICP equals game changer.
Rebuilding Everything on ICP
This has just started. It's cutting edge, but it's such a big deal. As soon as you find this, you start rebuilding everything on ICP. You're cutting out WordPress. You're cutting out Google Cloud and Amazon. And enterprises are discovering this — DFINITY has made it clear they're in talks with enterprises. They want the same thing I want. I have total control over this now. No third party can come in and censor me. I can build the website however I want, and it's practically free to host — close to free.
I've finally got it where I don't have to send people to OpenChat. I don't have to send people to Discord, to Google, to Telegram, to Skool. This tech is huge. I've got it where you can talk to me and just buy a call straight on my website — and I've still got my call calendar, and I've still got my Skool community, the Jerry Banfield Family. I've got tips. I'm going to put books on there. I'm going to put courses on there. I've got games on there — which apparently need an exit button — games up for free and games I can sell. And I have a blog with 1,267 blog posts that are cranking organic traffic straight into my website. I even had my shirt on there through Amazon, though I took it down for now because apparently they need me to prove that I'm the real Jerry Banfield.
Now all I have to do is crank videos everywhere, send people always to my website, and I can just print money off my website. Anything you want, I just put it on there and offer to sell it. And if I ever have a problem with one credit card processor, I just rotate it out and stick another one in. Guys, I've dreamed of something like this for so long, and the tech is doing it. That is not a small improvement. This is game-changing technology that people will ditch the other stuff they're using to build on, because it's easier, it's more secure, and it's cheaper. This is a devastating blow to the way the rest of the whole web is built right now, and that's not something that's irrelevant or that doesn't matter. And lots of the people building and exploring this are behind where I'm at — they're just testing it out.
The Only Question Is How Long It Takes
The people exploring this are making prototypes, but when you've got governments that can get the same basic benefits building on here that I get, they have every incentive to build on here, and there's almost no reason not to. The only question is how long will this take — and you've got to be in a position to be patient, because if you're demanding the price pumps next week, next month, even next year, you may lose the opportunity. You may capitulate. Everything is trying to get you to quit on ICP right now, and that's the test of faith, because blessed are those who are able to believe without seeing. Anyone who can see has no need to believe. And if you can see this — well, I don't have to believe without seeing anymore. I'm seeing. This is huge.
I've lost so much money over the years getting scraped by other businesses because I couldn't just build this stuff myself. Now I can put my courses straight on my website without some stupid WordPress plugin. I'll put up audio versions, because I can serve those straight from the blockchain. Or I can use unlisted videos on YouTube, and I'll put some of them in my Skool as well. This is what I've needed for so long. It solves so many problems. It makes everything so simple and so cheap. And it does the same thing whether you're a solopreneur, an enterprise, or a government. This is huge.
But you can't demand that it's going to happen on your schedule. You're not going to get a warning in advance before the pump happens, and it may just trend up slowly. I know some of you are making yourselves miserable because every time you see the ICP price pump a little bit, you're like, okay, it's happening! But there goes your chance to accumulate. It's just like once Bitcoin kept moving from 200 to 300, I started DCA-ing back in around 300-something — which looks dumb now, doesn't it? I already had 40 Bitcoin, I sold all of it, and then I started DCA-ing back in higher. The opportunity is here.
Don't Wait for ICP to Save You
But don't put off doing the work in the rest of your life. If you're unhappy with your job, then fix that. Don't wait for ICP to save you. I'm in this exact position myself. I'm not waiting for ICP to just bail me out. Now, I imagine that as long as I can survive financially until ICP pumps, then ICP may bail me out of all of my debt. It may buy me a house. And when ICP hits, with all my videos, I'm not just going to be a millionaire off the ICP I'm holding — all my channels, everything will pump, all of it. So I'm going to make a huge amount of money when this goes off. You could argue there are few people in the world who are going to profit more than me when this hits. But I've learned you've got to learn how to wait. And learning how to wait means you've got to be living and fully enjoying your life today.
One way I do that is dating. Some of you have told me, I really enjoy your dating videos — they're so much fun. So I have the Jerry Banfield Show, where I do the vlogs and talk about the details of my dating life, and I have a Jerry Banfield dating channel where I talk more in dating terms and lingo — those are specifically for a dating audience. The Jerry Banfield Show, whenever I do find a woman, will turn into something that isn't about dating anymore; it's just my vlogs. And I have fun every day. I'm doing videos on YouTube, I'm playing games, I'm coaching people on YouTube, I'm making crypto videos, I'm doing collaborations with my friends. I'm having fun. I'm not waiting for ICP to save me, but I'm prepared for ICP to change my life — and I'm enjoying my life every day.
I've Failed This Test Before
So I hope you can stick with it. I understand this is difficult. I get it. And I'm here to support you, because I've already failed this before. I failed to make myself an effortless, lazy millionaire because I couldn't handle the faith part of it. But I've been there. I've seen this before, and I've seen it again. What motivated me to find ICP is that I wanted another chance like I had with Bitcoin — and I messed the same opportunity up with Ethereum in 2016. I was there. I'm always there in the big innovations in technology. In AI — I've been all over AI. In social media — all over social media. I'm always there in big tech advances, because that's kind of my gift: seeing what's coming. I'm on the cutting edge of tech, and I'm always there early. ICP is going to be one of those things, like social media, which I crushed — I made millions of dollars because I was in on it way before everybody else. Live streaming games — crushed that, way in before everybody else. Same thing with crypto. But I missed a lot of opportunity by being impatient, by not having faith, by chasing short-term opportunities and gains, and by waiting for a savior instead of just being in position and patiently waiting.
So I hope this is helpful. I would love for you to explore the ICP blockchain yourself on my website, jerrybanfield.com. You can get lifetime access to the chat and be the epic second person ever to join, and you can try out this functionality on the blockchain for yourself. If you want to be the first one ever to drop a tip, you can have your message at the top of the tip wall leaderboard. You can play my games there too. And if you want to see how this conviction has played out video by video, everything I've made on ICP is collected in my ICP Crypto playlist.
If you want to talk to me one on one as soon as possible, you can book a call with me for ten or thirty minutes and we'll talk it through together.
You can also read all my blog posts — I turn all my videos into blog posts so they can't be censored or taken down — and there's a contact form on the site in case you find a bug. Keep the faith, my friends.