Guess who's back again, Jerry's back, tell some men, guess who's back. All right, let me just skip to the point. I'm going to start bull posting ICP again, because I have to say Bobby O made an incredibly supportive post, and at this point I've sold, swapped, or lost 6,000 of my ICP. I put about 3,000 of my ICP into cash in the bank, which I think is a good idea when you've got as much debt as I've got right now: 90k in credit cards and a hundred and some thousand in business loans, about 220k total. I talk about that on my main Jerry Banfield channel. But I'm going back to bull posting ICP, and I have to give credit first to Bobby O. Well, first to Blockchain Pill, who tried to encourage me to relax heavily before all this. I didn't relax, and I went off on DFINITY about the marketing, as I shared in I Can't Stop Marketing ICP (Even If I Want To). The main thing I would not do again is repeat my point so many times. I think I'm in a better position now to talk about ICP honestly and to bull post it with some level of a disclaimer, basically.
At this point I'm still holding 4,000 ICP. I've got 300 locked up, plus 700-some in maturity, plus my website runs on ICP every day. And that website has all the information about ICP. Everything I have on ICP, including how to schedule a call with me about it, lives on one page of my website. None of this is financial advice, by the way; it's just where I stand.
Grateful for Bobby O and Blockchain Pill
I'm really grateful to Bobby O and Blockchain Pill for stepping up and supporting me when I really needed it. Blockchain Pill supported me a lot when he saw I was getting upset with the marketing. He was like, easy buddy, easy, just relax, be patient, take it easy. I covered how he stood up for creators in Blockchain Pill: ICP Under Attack and Dfinity Needs to Support Their Content Creators. And Bobby O has been extremely supportive after the fact, even while I've been putting out videos debating him. To me that says a lot about Bobby O and Alex. That really shows their character. Did the two of them start dumping all over me? No. And I really appreciate that. When things are challenging, you find out who your real friends are. When bottles are popping and Jerry's making it rain in the VIP, everybody's your friend for that time. Bobby's post really pushed me over the top. I'd already been leaning in this direction, but this is what pushed me over.
To me, the dumbest thing that could possibly happen is if, after years of bull posting ICP constantly, the technology did take off and the price did pump and I missed it. That would be the stupidest scenario I could possibly imagine. Like if, for some reason, as I pointed out in previous videos, big tech comes out with their own solution, which there's no evidence of currently. That doesn't mean it's not going to happen or that it's not possible; it's just not probable. The leap of faith on the downside is that big tech is going to come out with something like this, but technology like this can be very difficult to build. And the leap of faith on ICP is that distribution is going to get accounted for.
My debate with Bobby O on tech versus distribution
When I read the post Bobby made today, he had just posted it after I debated him on another post. He made a different post where I debated him earlier today, and this is pretty amazing. I also love the post he made about Sui. That was hilarious and extremely accurate, like something everybody needs to see. So here's what happened. I made a video talking about how big tech probably is trying to upgrade their infrastructure and come up with their own things that have something in common with ICP, but not necessarily the same thing. I went deeper on that question in ICP Could Rebuild the Internet—and Most People Would Never Know. I debated him on it, he responded to it, and his response was very intelligent. Yes, I'm comparing two things that are theoretical. ICP has the tech advantage, and big tech has the distribution advantage. The theoretical tech solution from big tech doesn't exist yet, and ICP's theoretical distribution arguably has more evidence for its possibility at this point. So we had a respectful debate there.
Then, just a little while after that, he posted a post on his website. I read it, and it said that if Jerry went back to bull posting, he would instantly become the main onboarder, especially if the price popped. My take is that I might as well just bull post the entire time before the price pops, while the price is in the dumps like it has been for what feels like forever now, but really has only been a little over a year. He said this is the most likely outcome, and I agree, this is the most likely outcome. So let's cut to the chase and stop the drama. And yes, I am a wild card. At the same time, we are super early. If this works out the way we hope it will, and the way the tech should go, then I love this, and in the future nobody will care a lot if you don't like Jerry. Because when people who are new come into ICP, they tend to respond pretty positively to me. Plus I have other channels building followers over there, and that post was on my vlogs channel. So my ICP channel at this point is actually not my biggest channel anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time, which has been great.
I read Bobby's post and I thought, this is my reply. I said, thank you, Bobby. This makes me want to go back right away to bull posting, since ICP is my top investment. I have two meme coins, but I've gotten wrecked. I lost a thousand dollars on my Jerry meme coin on Robinhood in the last few days, and I told that whole story in I Sold 1,000 ICP for JERRY on Robinhood. And I lost thousands of dollars from getting hacked. If I had left everything on ICP, they wouldn't have been able to hack me, because my Internet Identity was protected with much stronger measures than my MetaMask wallet was. And I'm so glad I did not connect my Google account as a recovery email, or they would have stolen my ICP account also.
James Allen said DFINITY should just pay me
Bobby also was talking about community leaders. What's even more amazing is that, and it makes sense because Bobby has been a member of this community since before I was, at the same time James Allen made a video saying that DFINITY should just pay me. That's the critical mass we've reached. I almost forgot that. Sorry, James, but James made a video that was very important to this whole thing also. James Allen was one of the top ICP creators before, and I reacted to his exit in James Allen Quit ICP: My Reaction After Doing The Same in 2024. He just made this video where he said, DFINITY, please pay Jerry Banfield. And this video came right when I needed it. I saw it right after tennis yesterday.
He said three things. One, DFINITY, you're making it look ridiculous not paying Jerry Banfield and your other top creators. Either set it up through the network or whatever, but this is looking ridiculous. That's what he said: it's looking ridiculous, just pay people. That's how marketing works. Take care of your people. These are your community leaders, whether you want them or not, so take care of your community leaders. And I felt very affirmed by that.
Two, he said, Jerry, you need to start being consistent. He said it a little more harshly than that, but his point was, you need to be consistent. And for most of the last three years I have been consistently bull posting ICP, except for those nine months where I deleted everything, and for the last month where I kind of went off on all the negatives on ICP. For the rest of that time, I've posted thousands of videos that were promoting ICP: hundreds that were directly promoting ICP, and hundreds more, maybe close to a thousand more, that were indirectly promoting ICP by dumping on other coins. It's like all of this just came together. I watched his video yesterday.
Oh, and three, James called out the ICP community in the video. It's similar to what Bobby did, except James was a little more harsh. He's like, y'all are cowards. You should support this man who has done so much to build up and lead this community, and you should support him getting compensated so he can be here and do what he needs to do for all of you. That's paraphrasing what he said, but he called out the community like, y'all are cowards, y'all are being ridiculous, y'all look like spoiled brats in this community. And I left feeling very validated.
A critical mass of support
Then I read Bobby's post today, and Blockchain Pill has remained supportive the whole time. Blockchain Pill especially was like, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you're in the metric system, maybe a hundred milligrams of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure. I've been talking with this woman in South Africa and she's got me thinking in the metric system. I read Bobby's post and it was just like a critical mass tonight.
And yeah, my bad posts are not going to have an impact on my long-term potential success. If anything, my reach hit record levels, and certainly record levels of people posting against me. But to be fair, I've had a lot of patience and understanding with many of you. I've certainly been hurt, but I've also tried not to read what you've written. So if you posted a bunch of critique of me, at this point I've never read it. I probably have no idea. And how had I not liked Bobby's post yet? Because I'm on a second account right now. This is my crypto account, so I certainly liked and shared the post from this account.
So at this point, yeah, the dumbest thing would be to stop. You could even call it the sunk cost fallacy psychologically. It's like, I've put so much into ICP, I'm not going to stop right now. It's not desperate enough. In terms of what's happening with ICP in the background, it's not desperate enough to stop. Things are progressing, like with the UNDP partnership, the Pakistan partnership, and the Chatty app. And at this point the benefit is that I have diversified, where my Crypto Reviews channel is not just going to shill ICP constantly. It is going to talk about reviewing other coins, MaxFi, my Jerry meme coin. And I've gotten back into JBBJ. I have to say the JBBJ holders have been incredible. JBBJ is my meme coin, the first meme coin I created, and it has certainly had some rough times. JBBJ was 120,000 JBBJ to one ICP back when ICP's price was way higher, so the JBBJ price over the long term tells its own story, which I'll get into next.
Over the last year or so since I launched JBBJ, yes, it did pump. At the highest it ran up to the point where one ICP would only buy you about 30,000 JBBJ. But back when I was looking at buying and had just launched JBBJ, the price was one ICP to 120,000 JBBJ. So JBBJ has really been through hell with me quitting on the meme coin, which I wrote about in I Tried Trading Meme Coins and It Was Horrible, Even on ICP, and the people who have held on to it have been amazing. I actually wonder if somebody at DFINITY might have grabbed some of it, because the top account holds 29 percent and has not done anything with it since they scooped it up. Some people actually sold recently after getting upset with me. But I now have five percent of the JBBJ, and I have a buy order in for 300 more ICP worth of it in case anybody tries to sell. I've been sitting there catching sell orders with my buys on this for several weeks now.
This is kind of amazing, how all of this happened. I'm super grateful for all of you who've stuck with me through this. I mean, I've lost a few hundred followers, maybe, out of the thousands I have. And by going off so much about marketing and about content creators, I may have missed out on the opportunity to get some kind of support from DFINITY. That's okay. I have a lot of other opportunities.
My ICP channel is one sixth of what I do now
My ICP channel is one sixth of the YouTube channels I have. My main channel has 10,000 watch hours on it. What has happened on my main channel has just been going off. That channel has passed and then doubled and tripled the ICP channel. It has made much more money than the ICP channel, the watch hours are much higher, and the growth is much faster. It's reaching a much bigger audience. But I intend to continue bull posting ICP, and I feel like I can do it much more honestly now, after a month of posts like Going All In on ICP Was the WORST Mistake I've Made in Crypto. I feel like I had the conversation we needed to have, and it's time to stop being hurt that Pierre unfollowed me, which I covered in Pierre Unfollows Me, Signals Lack of DFINITY Support for Marketing ICP. It's totally reasonable when you look at it, and after all, he only unfollowed me because he did follow me before. So that was nice. Pierre followed me, and Dominic Williams was following me on my X account before I deleted it.
Giving DFINITY credit for the $25,000 sponsorship
DFINITY has certainly appreciated my efforts, and they did pay me $25,000 after all at the beginning of 2024, which seems like a long time ago now. But that is the largest sponsorship I have ever received in the history of making 10,000-plus videos, and it came from DFINITY. So DFINITY, I will acknowledge that. I should have been saying that in all of my videos: they did give me $25,000 at the beginning of 2024, right before they ended the community grants program not long after. They have financially supported my channel directly via sponsorship more than anybody else has in all the years since I started on YouTube in 2011.
Going forward, I'm going to continue bull posting ICP, and I will acknowledge the debate Bobby and I had. I will acknowledge the distribution and the marketing more. I am optimistic, now that I've had this conversation, that DFINITY is going to somehow put systems in place to do some marketing that could bring better results than we've seen with things like the ICP hubs in the past, and more consistent support than we've seen with community grants. I laid out my ideas for that in ICP: We Need Better Marketing and It's Not All Up To Dfinity.
I use ICP every day and get paid in it
I build my website on ICP every day, as I explained in I'm Building My Business on ICP After Getting Hacked. I use the tech every day myself, and I know how good it is. I take payments in ICP. About half the payments on my website have come in ICP. I've got a new monetization dashboard straight on my website, which is cool: you can see the exact sales I've got, and the largest single payment came through ICP, which is awesome, because I love getting payments in crypto. Lots of the payments have come in crypto.
So I'm going back to focusing on my channels and not flipping out. I see it the same way with loved ones. At some point you do need to step up and tell loved ones if they're an alcoholic, a drug addict, etc. At some point it becomes enabling not to say what needs to be said. But I've said what needs to be said about the marketing. Same thing with loved ones: I've found it makes sense to tell somebody once, hey, I think you have a problem with alcohol, drugs, etc., you should go get help with that. But saying it over and over again gets to be cruel. So I've said what I need to say about the marketing. Everyone knows how I feel, that I'd love to see some amazing marketing here. I've already given my ideas on how to do that. I'm going to go back and put my head down serving this community, and whoever wants to support me, that's great. I have enough support in my life. I'll accept whatever pain comes with staying in the ICP community.
Dominic Williams is the number one voice in crypto to me
Dominic Williams: I'm so excited to get back to covering more of Dominic's posts, which I was kind of boycotting for a while. To me, Dominic is the number one voice to listen to in crypto in terms of somebody who has technical expertise, is in the middle of the industry, and has been doing this since I was in college or a little bit after I was in college. He's been doing this for a long time, and I've been doing what I do for a long time after that. Dominic is the one person in crypto who really changed how I thought about crypto and helped me see that the technology does matter. Dominic knows who I am, for better or worse. Dominic followed me, and Pierre supported, followed, and liked my posts for a while, so I'm really grateful. And I'm going to get back to work.
I love y'all. Thank you for going through this trial by fire with me, ICP community, and for having this showdown about marketing. And I'm not really creating videos for free either, because you all support me. I get paid from YouTube, and the only reason that YouTube channel has these analytics is because a bunch of you came over when the channel was tiny. I have an X account too that has gotten followers from the crypto community. You all started this channel. It wouldn't have gotten where it's at so far without you, and every video along the way is in my ICP Crypto playlist. So I'm going to get back to work, and I'll see you soon. Blockchain Pill, the MaxFi team, Bobby O, James Allen: love y'all, thank you. And to each of you I haven't named by name, come pop into my live streams and say hello so I can thank you there in person.