James Allan was right about ICP, we have a lot to learn from his experience, and we need to be honest about what is happening today in ICP. If you have not heard of James Allan before, he has a channel called CityXcape, and his video today is about how Caffeine AI is a flop. James Allan used to be big into ICP. Then he deleted all of his ICP hype videos, turned toxic about ICP, and got into shilling Kaspa. Now, I do not agree with Kaspa, but I would love to know if James got paid to do his Kaspa videos through the Kaspa ambassador program, because that would make sense.
Things have been going bad with DFINITY and with ICP, and I have been so busy trying to tell people what they want to hear in the ICP community that I was not listening to James and I was not listening to the downsides. James has done a bunch of videos that have been critical of ICP, and this is not something to just dismiss as FUD. The attitude I took about James's ICP videos before was, "Oh, come on, James, come back to ICP." I did a great one-on-one interview with James a little over a year ago. We had an awesome interview before he switched over to fudding ICP. And now I totally get it. James just had a different journey, but the same kind of destination. This should be a wake-up call to DFINITY.
Children of DFINITY
The way I look at it is this. James Allan and I are essentially, in some ways, children of DFINITY. I am going to make this analogy. I have two children. Even though I am divorced, I have set up my whole life to continue doing my part for my children. There is lots of other stuff I could do and lots of other places I could go. I would love to move to Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa. I would love to go all over the world. There are all kinds of opportunities for me as a content creator. I can live anywhere in the world. I could live somewhere super cheap with tons of hot women in their 20s who would want to date me and have a family with me, and the money I make online could go really far all over the world. So I have a lot of opportunities all over the world.
But I do not move all over the world to where things might be better for me personally, because I have two kids that I created. My actions created those kids, literally, physically. Those kids just left. I had a great morning with them. I have three nights a week with them. I feed them, I clothe them, I pay for stuff for them, I send them to school. I do my part, and my ex-wife does her part. We do 50 percent each for the kids, because those kids are my responsibility, because I had them. It would be irresponsible of me to just move off to some other continent, which I would very much like to do. I have a friend in Thailand who says, "Dude, come over here. You could have Thai women in their early 20s lined up for you. Your cost of living would be super cheap. With the money you make online, you would be rich over here. It would be awesome." And I tell him I cannot come to Thailand because I have children that I need to take care of. Yes, I certainly could just leave those kids behind. But it would be insane, when I created these children, to not do my part to raise them up and take care of them.
You know what DFINITY is not doing? They are not taking care of their metaphorical creator children. DFINITY made this amazing technology in the Internet Computer Protocol. I have my website hosted on the Internet Computer Protocol today, so I am using the technology every day. I appreciate each of you that goes to jerrybanfield.com, that joins the Skool, that schedules a Zoom call. I got cameos up now that we are having a talk in the chat today. I have got coaching up on there. I have got a leaderboard. I have got tips. I have got a meme coin game. This blockchain technology is awesome, especially with Claude. But DFINITY is not taking care of its people. They pissed so many millions and millions of dollars away into the ICP hubs and then quietly shut them down, which James Allan appropriately calls out. And now I am having the conversation we need to have, which James Allan was doing before me. He was having the conversations we need to have about ICP, and I am following his lead now. We need to have these conversations in ICP. Things are not going well, and there are things DFINITY could do.
The marketing is piss poor
Now, yes, the Pakistan partnership is good. The UNDP partnership is good. Multidex is good. Those are things that are going well, and there are a lot of other things. But the marketing is going piss poor for ICP. Absolutely piss poor. And marketing and business are critically important. Here is an example: the ICP price is $2.77. That is evidence the marketing is going piss poor. And DFINITY, of course, Pierre unfollows me when I start to bring this up and offer a solution.
All DFINITY needs to do is this. Go into the dashboard on the governance and the Network Nervous System. Go in and submit a proposal to add a marketing budget to the Network Nervous System. That is all you have to do. I figured this out for you. You are welcome. I have literally solved ICP marketing. That is what a genius I am. I have figured out exactly what you need to do to fix the marketing, and it literally just takes a proposal. I am like a child giving value back to its parents. All we need is to either take some of the voting rewards function, or some of the undispersed voting rewards, or put in something comparable to node provider rewards or less, and then mint that. That is the solution we can execute immediately to fix the marketing. Because I do not care how you want to talk about it: ICP's marketing is DFINITY, and the marketing they have been doing, at least to the public, has gone to absolute crap over this year.
This has been concerning me, but I was too busy making ICP videos trying to tell my audience what you wanted to hear, because usually what does best on YouTube and X is to tell people what they want to hear. I am proud of James Allan. I realize that when he was making these videos, people were not wanting to hear the things he was saying, including me. But it is perfectly aligned. Think about when I deleted everything online, which was a little over a year ago now. James Allan was starting to get a little toxic about ICP around the same time. I deleted everything online around the same time James Allan switched on ICP. We were both seeing the same thing.
DFINITY does not owe me anything, and I do not owe my kids anything either
I got to the point of saying, look, I have given so much value to DFINITY to help their investments. I have given way more value to them than they have given to me. I have been like a child showing up to his parents, doing everything he can, trying to get love, and DFINITY has done almost nothing at all for me. Many of you have bitched and complained and said, well, DFINITY does not owe you anything. I do not owe my kids anything either. I fathered them. I am a free man. I could go live anywhere in the world I want to. I do not owe them anything. I show up because I love them, because they give so much to me, because they have got so much love to give me. I do not have to show up for them. I want to show up.
If DFINITY was doing a good job at marketing, they would want to show up for me and for the other creators. They would want to set something up to say, let's get this marketing thing solved on a public, personal level once and for all. It does not have to be just for me. It might not even benefit me at all at this point. But there should be something on the Network Nervous System that prints money for marketing. It costs almost nothing. It is very easy to do. It completely or nearly removes the marketing burden from DFINITY. They could keep going on and pursuing government partnerships while allowing the community to be taken care of.
This is not just about me. For all of you whiners who think I am just asking for stuff for myself, I am asking for people like James Allan to be taken care of. James made so many videos about ICP. James turned when DFINITY gave him the cold shoulder for a year. He made videos over and over hyping ICP, and he got no thanks for that from DFINITY when he was giving them more value than he was giving anywhere else. So then what happens? He goes over to Kaspa. I imagine Kaspa gave him a Kaspa ambassador role and took care of him. That is what I would imagine. I do not know.
Dom and Pierre are doing the marketing themselves
What I am seeing is that the marketing across the board is going downhill with DFINITY. They used to do research and development reports. Why have those stopped? That is a major red flag: these research and development reports, which had been coming for years, have stopped. Not only that, almost nothing is even being done on marketing anymore that I can see. You have got one video in the last month with a thousand views. Damn near every one of my videos gets a thousand views. DFINITY needs help with marketing. Somebody is probably getting paid six figures a year, over a hundred grand, and what is this? It is September 13th, and there is one post, from August 27th.
It seems like Dom and Pierre are having to do the marketing themselves. Where is everybody else working on this? Well, I can tell you I have been working on the marketing. Do you all know how many ICP videos I have made and how many hundreds of thousands of impressions I have gotten on my posts? Way more, way more than the official DFINITY account. Right now it is basically Pierre and Dominic doing the marketing. Pierre does one post about happy Sovereign Cloud Day, hyping MEXC for some reason, which I guess is nice that they posted, and an update on the Internet Computer in Pakistan, which is nice. Why are Dom and Pierre having to do the marketing? That is not a good sign. And there is an easy solution. What drives me nuts is that there is an easy solution. Dom and Pierre should not be having to do the marketing.
Caffeine, at least we do have a post, but for God's sake, 3,400 impressions. I take a crap and wipe and put that up and it gets 3,400 impressions. Look at this one of mine from yesterday: 6,000 impressions. And here is an example.
When I talk about crypto generally, I get double the impressions of ICP. Zcash, double the impressions of ICP. Unless I discuss the things that need to be discussed, like why the pumps. When I talk about meme coins, more views. Here, I sold $10,000 worth of ICP. Going all in personally was one of the things that I did, and I sold $10,000 worth of ICP. It was one of the dumbest things I have done on ICP. Because you know what? I invested a whole bunch, and then I did work to make everybody else rich. My videos helped bring millions and millions, maybe tens of millions of dollars, if not more, into the value of the tokens DFINITY is holding, which is something like 20 percent or so of the voting power, at least. DFINITY, as far as I can see, is the number one holder of ICP tokens. I brought a hell of a lot of value to them, and I got pimped out doing that. And they can change that.
Imagine what ICP's price today would be if DFINITY had executed in the past what I am saying they should do now. Imagine what will happen going forward if DFINITY adds a marketing fund to the Network Nervous System. There is no conversation more worth having in the ICP ecosystem. Everything else you are talking about in the ICP ecosystem, the future of the technology, all of that is a waste of time at this point. Because without marketing, it does not matter how good this technology is. The longer this technology is out, the easier it will be for somebody else to put the same version of the technology out, push it harder with marketing, and make all of this irrelevant. AI is here. There is no reason somebody else cannot make their own version of the Internet Computer Protocol at this point. Without marketing, what we have got on ICP is all in a vacuum, and that is a very bad position.
James Allan was right
So I am saying James Allan was right, and I support James Allan. I understand James Allan's journey with ICP better now. I wish I had had more openness to this myself, and that instead of deleting everything last year, I had taken a similar position to James Allan and started criticizing ICP and everything happening in it. Because look, love most of the time should be supportive, but when things need to change, it needs to be called out. Do not hate on me for saying what other people do not have the courage to say. James Allan did have the courage to say it. James Allan had the courage to come out and say this is not working, ICP is a flop. James Allan turning on ICP and me deleting my channel happened in direct proximity to each other. Those events are very related. Both of those events happened because some of you in the community whine about marketing without understanding it, and because at DFINITY, marketing is not a priority. And the marketing money that has been spent has been pissed away into something that clearly has not produced results.
I know a lot of us like to say, oh, well, the price is whatever. The price is primarily a reflection of the marketing. The marketing sucks for ICP. It is time to stop acting like it does not, and it is time to get the solution in place. The only conversation that needs to happen is getting this on the Network Nervous System. Nothing else matters. And unlike James Allan, I have proposed a very clear solution. Now, he offered some solutions also, but I have proposed a very clear, very obvious, very easy solution. So to me, if DFINITY does not get on the marketing for this, I will still hold my long-term bag, but I will dump the rest of my liquid bag too. Because at the rate we are going with DFINITY's marketing, this is going in a bad direction. I have proposed exactly how to fix this. So let's fix this. Thank you, James Allan, for calling this out.
Half my ICP audience left overnight
And I have got better opportunities now. I am not making crypto videos every day anymore, and I am grateful. Here is an example. On my Jerry Banfield ICP channel, about half the audience left overnight when I stopped showing up every day just telling you what you want to hear, even when the reality I was seeing was not matching that. Half the audience on that channel left overnight. Everything I made over there is still in my ICP Crypto playlist, and that is how much change we need to see in the ICP community. We need to hear what needs to be said. The marketing sucks on ICP. It is DFINITY's fault more than anyone else's. DFINITY has the ability to fix it, easily, and I have shown exactly how.
And I have bigger opportunities, like this channel. My Jerry Banfield channel has popped off. I have made more money on this channel in a week than I made on my ICP channel in a month. For the first time in a long time, I have a channel that has passed the ICP channel. I am done grinding out ICP content. I have huge opportunities just being an internet personality. I am going to go on other people's shows. I have some incredible real-life live streams, and I care about this much more than crypto. The viewers dropping way higher super chats than I am seeing on ICP care way more about me talking about real life. So I am grateful. This guy Pat Dixon, I just emailed him to do a collaboration, and I am going to start watching his content. I am grateful that I am done having crypto be the main thing I do.
DFINITY's child is moving out
DFINITY's marketing failure and the community's toxic response are the number one reason DFINITY's child is moving out and not having much of a relationship anymore, because you did not take care of me. So let this be a valuable learning opportunity. When you see James and I, two of the biggest ICP creators, both bail after everything, here is an opportunity for the rest of the people to stop being shallow, narrow-minded, and lacking critical thinking. It is time for Dominic Williams and Pierre to step up and say, look, however you feel about me and James Allan at this point, you need to be taking care of the people who are showing up and doing content, like Blockchain Pill, like Bobby O. You need to be taking care of those creators. And if you are not, then it is the same thing: if I just moved away from my kids, what kind of father would you think I am? That is how I am looking at DFINITY right now. You are not giving to the people who are doing the most for you, and you can change that.
I chose to stay living in St. Petersburg, Florida, even though it is more expensive, even though dating is way harder, just so I can see my kids. I have made my life more difficult so I can show up and be a parent that is present. So DFINITY can damn sure make a proposal and add a marketing budget onto the Network Nervous System to turn this entire thing around. And if they do not, I am bearish on ICP every day until the price moves. If the price does not move, I do not care about the technology anymore. At this point, it is too easy to expect that somebody else is going to make better technology, or that somebody else is going to come out with equal, perhaps even inferior, technology and just steal the market. If you do not get this marketed in time, somebody else is going to. They are trying right now. There are billionaires using AI to try and make their own version of this, and they will put it out as their own and just destroy the market share for ICP. Marketing is the only way to guarantee this does not happen, regardless of the partnerships they have. Imagine someone like Elon Musk coming out and saying on X that they are going to start putting X directly on the blockchain, here is the technology. ICP goes to zero, guys. So I am just saying, market this before it is too late. And you are not getting anything for free out of me hyping ICP until you take care of me.
Thank you to all of you who have come over from ICP to be there and hang out with me on the live show. This is the best of what I have got to offer, and make sure you are there on the live show if you want the best experience with me.