It's a sad day for me in the ICP community. It seems pretty clear that I'm continuing to believe in the technology and hope that it gets adopted. At the same time, in terms of me creating content going forward, I'm not sure what that's going to look like. The first thing: Pierre, the chief business officer from DFINITY, was following me before, and Pierre just unfollowed me after I was talking about the marketing for ICP and talking about a very clear solution. So it looks like, with that in mind, DFINITY is not going to support me directly, and the preferred option, supporting a marketing fund on the Network Nervous System, isn't happening either. Maybe that could happen someday, but it seems like they haven't put much interest in supporting the community directly. There's been no support and no outreach, and this can't continue like this.
What I've been doing, hyping up ICP for years, has cost me a lot of money that I would have made. I would have made a lot of money hyping up other cryptos. I'm getting great support talking about Robinhood Chain right now. I'm making plenty of money on MaxFi, more money with MaxFi in the last couple of weeks than I made with all my ICP content all year. And if you look back, I'm sad to see the response from so many in the community, absolutely lacking any gratitude for all these videos I've done, instantly willing to turn on me and attack me when we talk about what needs to be talked about. Yes, I believe relationships and life should be mostly supportive, mostly affirming, mostly love, joy, and connection. But at the same time, when things are not working, they need to be talked about. We need to have uncomfortable conversations without just resorting to name-calling, FUD, and being nasty. I'm disappointed to see how this marketing conversation has played out.
The elephant in the room with ICP
The elephant in the room with ICP is that DFINITY has spent tens of millions of dollars on marketing, and at least in terms of the price, the marketing has been completely ineffective. At the same time, I've done very effective marketing for ICP, and yet I personally have mostly lost money doing it. If I would have just continued to hype up all the cryptos I was hyping up three years ago, I'd be far ahead. My audience was disgusted that I went all in on ICP. I had said, before I went all in on ICP earlier that year, that the biggest mistake I'd made in crypto was going all in on a single coin. And I've got to say, I did it again.
Going into ICP, and the lack of support a year ago, taught me that the support should come from the blockchain itself. I'm ultimately serving the blockchain with my videos, and it looks like there's no point in continuing to fight a battle every day to get the blockchain to print marketing. If DFINITY doesn't want to support that, it's not going to happen. And if the community is thriving off being toxic, attacking content creators, and attacking me because I'm saying that what I'm doing is valuable and I want to get paid for my work, then if I'm not going to get paid here, I'm going to go get paid somewhere else. Think about it: if you didn't have a job, would you spend all your time volunteering somewhere instead of taking a job working somewhere else? It's time for me to be practical about my content. I'm going to show up where I can get paid, because I'm a professional. I'm not just here creating content out of passion. I'm here creating content for a paycheck, and there are lots of paychecks. The ICP community as a whole, at least the loudest voices, and DFINITY have made it clear that there's not a paycheck here, that the work is not appreciated, that it is not valuable, and that there's not going to be any support. Pierre unfollowing me is a big sign that there's no support from DFINITY for what I'm doing.
Marketing and price matter more than technology in the long run
So I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my ICP content going forward. ICP has awesome technology solving real-world problems, but marketing and price matter, and marketing and price are arguably even more important in the long run than the technology, because competitors can come out with technology. There are so many big companies in the world, and at this point, easily one of them could be working on something similar to ICP that they're keeping secret until it's ready. Then they release it and move their infrastructure onto it, especially since ICP has been showing this off for years. If you're at Google, Microsoft, or Amazon, you'd much rather put out your own secure blockchain cloud solution than use someone else's in most cases. Google was not the first search engine, but they came along, made a better search engine, and earned the vast majority of the market share compared to everybody else.
Without marketing to the people who need this technology now, and without speculation, the ICP price at this rate is going to stay down almost indefinitely. At some point, maybe this technology will get used enough to create enough buying demand for ICP. But at this point, it's tough to face that my actions, at least in terms of anyone following me and in terms of my own personal investments, have been ineffective. I could have made so much more money literally just holding Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, as sad as that sounds. And if I had shown that as an example, my followers would be way further ahead financially now than on the entire journey I've taken everybody on. I've got to say, going all in on ICP appears to be one of the worst decisions I've ever made in crypto. In the long term, that could change. I'm going to continue to do my neuron and hope that in the long term it turns around. In the short term, I don't see that it's realistic to expect it.
A major red flag in this ecosystem
DFINITY's lack of support for proper marketing in the community is a major red flag in this ecosystem. The tens of millions they've spent on marketing have proven completely ineffective, at least in the price and the visibility of ICP in the bigger crypto world, and that's a big red flag. What they should have done is approach me, which they did not, and say, "Look, Jerry, we appreciate your content. We'd like to support you." Instead, Pierre unfollows me rather than reaching out and saying, "I see you're having a hard time. Let's do something about this." Nope. Unfollow Jerry. We don't need him.
I feel that I'm needed and better appreciated somewhere else. At the same time, I'm not going to break with ICP completely. But I'm going to go where I'm appreciated. On MaxFi, I'm appreciated. Doing videos about Robinhood Chain, I am appreciated, and I'm instantly bringing in new subscribers. I'm going to turn my crypto content around in the direction where it's most appreciated. I'm disappointed it's turned out like this. I filmed some much more toxic versions of this originally, complete with swear words. I thought about the Queen video that I released, which in the short term ended things with her. But then I made $2,000 selling that video, I got YouTube channels monetized, I got great content, and I got better at dating because of it. So I'm not going to completely burn the bridge with ICP, but I'm not sure what I can do in terms of ICP content going forward. I could do some more balanced ICP content: look, the technology is awesome, the marketing and the price are seriously lacking, and I hope the thesis is correct in terms of the technology.
Pulling out half to two thirds of my liquid ICP
I'm planning on pulling out at least half, if not two thirds, of my liquid ICP. That way, if the price does go up and all the technology gets adopted and it's the future of crypto, I'll still have 3,000-plus ICP plus 700-plus in maturity, and I'll still be getting about an ICP in maturity every day. If things do well, that'll be enough to still realize some significant gains. But at this point, with the $16,000 I have sitting in ICP, it's unrealistic to expect that the attacks on ICP are going to stop. In fact, the attacks on ICP are likely to continue and escalate, because one of the best ways to destroy ICP would be to find a weakness in the technology, and the price suppression and marketing suppression are already being perfectly effective. If DFINITY and the community don't want to step up and allow the blockchain to create its own money for marketing, and if the reaction from DFINITY is to pull back and not support me and my content after all the people I've brought into ICP, then the logical step for me is to step back from ICP as well. I'm not getting what I need out of this relationship. I've been giving and giving and giving and giving.
Some of you in the community have been giving a lot too. You've been joining my community, scheduling calls, being on Skool, and joining the chat. Some of you have been giving also. But when I talk about ICP in person, nobody wants to invest in ICP. I mentioned MaxFi just once, and a woman I know said, "I've got $5,000. I'll give it to you. I want you to put it in MaxFi, show me how to do that, and I'll pay you to set it up." I want to be showing my followers how to make some real money in crypto, not watching prices go down indefinitely.
This situation looks hopeless, and hopelessness is useful
Between the price suppression, the enemies ICP has at this point, and the lack of community initiative to take on marketing as a cause and get the blockchain to work, this situation with ICP looks pretty hopeless. It could turn around. But with the public reaction, DFINITY's lack of response, and the only signal I'm seeing from DFINITY being negative, with Pierre unfollowing me and not reaching out to me at all, this situation feels hopeless on ICP right now. I hope the story in the long term can be something different. Because going all in on ICP was one of the worst things I've done as a content creator: sabotaging all the income I was earning, crushing my earnings and my own investments for years in crypto, while the content creators around me blew up and made a whole bunch of money promoting other ecosystems. Then I get into an ecosystem where, as soon as I bring up what needs to be brought up and talked about, people turn on me and tell me I should get out and that everything I've done is worthless.
I think it's time to move on, but not completely. I got divorced last year, and I'm not moving on completely from my ex. We still parent the children together. But in terms of our dating life, it's over. To me, being a full-time ICP creator, my dedication and complete commitment to ICP, is over. I may still do a video here and there, but it'll be balanced, positive with negative. This era of me being hella hyped about ICP is over. I'm selling most of my ICP, and I'll keep enough. This is a bad situation, and I feel kind of silly that everybody outside crypto can see what a bad situation this is with ICP. I love a comeback story, and I hope ICP turns into a comeback story. But right now, this purely looks bad. The tech is amazing, and the marketing and the price are terrible, which to me makes for an even worse story. If the tech sucked, it wouldn't matter that the price and marketing were horrible, like a lot of cryptos. But the tech's amazing.
Apparently it's not okay to have a public discussion about the marketing. Some say I should have just approached DFINITY privately and had this discussion. People have been complaining about the marketing for ICP for years, and DFINITY has done nothing that has proven effective in moving the price against the enemies that are suppressing it. Talking about how ICP is being attacked from the outside while not addressing the opportunities to improve from the inside is insane. I would be amazingly bullish on ICP if the community stepped up and said, "Yes, let's take marketing seriously. Let's get the blockchain printing some money for marketing. Let's do what we can ourselves." If DFINITY had followed the community there, great. But this community has proven to be unhealthy, and a big part of that is the social media algorithms. The healthy part of the community is not so vocal, and when they see people going off on me, they're scared to participate. They don't want to get roasted.
When Pierre is unfollowing me and DFINITY is not doing anything about the marketing, at least nothing that's been effective in moving the price for years, that says it all. Ultimately, if your marketing is not moving the price, it's not working. If the price moves in the long term off the marketing and the government partnerships, then great, it worked. But it's been five years, the price is near all-time lows, and the people who are actively doing the best marketing, or had been, like me, are not being supported by DFINITY or by the blockchain. Sometimes in life, the worst thing to do is keep having hope in a hopeless situation. If a situation is truly hopeless, getting hopeless will allow you to make changes. My alcoholism is the example: getting hopeless that I could drink successfully is what allowed me to get sober and change my life. And I'm hopeless about ICP at this point. This marketing thing, the way the community has responded, and DFINITY's lack of any kind of positive response, acknowledgement, or outreach, even publicly acknowledging, "Hey, yes, the ICP hubs didn't work, we're going to try something new," would have been something. Add DFINITY stopping the research and development reports and the lack of effort on the official DFINITY accounts, and this is bad. That doesn't mean it's going to stay bad, and it doesn't mean it can't turn around. But it's time for me to move, and it's time for me to do the absolute minimum with my ICP content.
Where my content is going instead
If you'd like the rest of my content, everything's linked on jerrybanfield.com. I'm going to be focusing my crypto content on my Crypto Reviews channel, where I'm being enthusiastically supported. My videos on Robinhood Chain are immediately getting more views than my videos on ICP, immediately, even though nobody from Robinhood Chain knows me. Robinhood Chain videos are literally doubling the results of recent ICP videos. One of my first Robinhood Chain videos ever brought 22 subscribers and hundreds of watch hours. Compare that to my recent ICP videos, where nobody even wants to listen to me talk about what needs to be done to make ICP better now. That's okay. I accept it. It's fine. This ICP video is absolutely flopping, because nobody even wants to have real conversations and improve this. Maybe some people do, but they don't feel like they have a voice, and they feel like nobody cares and nothing can be done.
This is the third version of this video, and this one's definitely going out. I hope this turns around, but I'm not optimistic about it turning around at this point. If I dump two thirds of my ICP and the price pumps immediately afterward, oh well. I'll still have a third, and I'll still get my ICP every day, and I'll be making a lot of money in other ecosystems. For me as a content creator, it's pretty much a guaranteed win to stop doing only ICP content at this point. The other ecosystems pay, and they pay a lot. They appreciate content creators. They know how important content creators are, and they pay, and they pay, and they pay. So this is kind of karma, and I'm interested to see how things go from here. I'm not going to completely burn the bridge with ICP, but I'm going to step back, and I'm not going to hype ICP up anymore. If I make ICP content, it'll be as fair and balanced as possible. The tech is awesome. The marketing, the price, and the enemies of ICP are very bad. That's it.
I appreciate your support. If you want to keep watching, Jerry Banfield Crypto Reviews is where the action is going to be going forward, and I'm going to cut back, if not stop, putting videos out on my ICP channel, where my ICP Crypto playlist holds everything I've said before. My Jerry Banfield vlogs are getting as much watch time as my ICP audience on that channel. My dating videos have thousands of watch hours, and so do gaming and my videos for creators. I'm grateful I diversified, and I'm grateful the ICP community helped me grow some of these channels. But this is it. So to all the haters, all the nasty comments, and everybody talking crap, I hope you're happy with the results of your actions, and we'll see how this works out for all of us in the future. In most scenarios, I'm going to start making a lot more money for myself, and my viewers are going to start making more money for themselves also.
If you want to talk to me, I'm only reading what comes through jerrybanfield.com. I'm not reading private messages, forum posts, or DMs. If you're not paying to support me and my work, I'm not listening. I'm trying as much as possible to not see anything outside of the people who are paying to support me, who've said, "Jerry, this reaction from the ICP community is insane." Some of the people most supporting me now were completely against me going all in on ICP years ago, and they'll be very happy for me to start covering other coins and other ecosystems instead of FUDding the rest of crypto.
Thanks for watching, and I hope the journey with you continues on other channels.