ICP Holding: Why Being Bored in Crypto Means You're Doing It Right

Here is where I have landed on ICP: I hold it, I stake it, and I try not to look at the price. If you feel bored in crypto while holding a coin you have researched, I think that boredom is a good sign. It usually means you have stopped gambling and started holding something with a real reason behind it. That is the idea this page is built around.

The question I get most often is some version of whether ICP is a scam and when it goes up. I can't answer the second part, and I won't pretend to. What I can tell you is what I do. I'm not trading it, I'm not reading charts for it, and I don't think the day-to-day price tells you much about where a technology ends up. My reasoning is in the posts below, and it has shifted in some ways over the last two years, so it helps to read them in order.

My first post on this theme was from July 2024, when I wrote that being bored in crypto is a sign of success. At that point I already held ICP, staked it, and was spending less and less time on price charts. My argument was that crypto feels hard when you are trading and gambling, and that once you find a real project with real technology and a real team, the rest of the market starts to look like noise. I still hold that view.

In October 2024, Just Be Bored and You'll Level Up in Crypto With ICP and OpenChat pushed the idea further. Boredom, I argued, was a signal to grow somewhere else. I had stopped making daily crypto videos for a while, taken up tennis more seriously, started a diary series, and stopped treating meme coins as entertainment. I wrote that crypto is a means to an end, and that making money in it will not fix loneliness, sickness or depression.

The next shift came in June 2026. A friend who held about 10,000 ICP wanted to sell, mainly because an interest rate he was earning had been cut to around 6 percent. In My Friend Almost Sold 10,000 ICP… Then We Talked I argued that the comparison was the wrong one. A steady interest rate on a position is a different thing from a position that could grow many times over, and selling into a quiet market is a regret many people carry for years. I had about 6,700 ICP myself at the time, and I said plainly that none of it was financial advice.

The most recent post, ICP Is the Only Crypto That Lets Me Relax from July 2026, is where I have landed. I had stopped checking Coinbase, I told a friend to delete the app from his phone, and I said I was dollar-cost averaging toward 10,000 ICP while already holding around 7,500. My reasoning was that once you have enough, the question shifts from how much more to buy to whether you can ignore the price for years. Most people in crypto react to the price rather than reasoning about it, and I think a lot of the fear and excitement they feel is the same feeling in the body.

Looking across the four posts, the core position has not changed. Hold ICP, stake it, research it deeply, and keep it out of the trading loop. What has changed is who I am talking to. In 2024 I mostly described boredom as a personal skill. By 2026 I was talking to a friend I was trying to keep from selling, and to myself about the times I did sell. Both versions say the same thing: the price will not tell you when to stop.

If you want the research behind the position, the pages on how much to accumulate and the bear case for ICP cover the other side of the argument. Read those before you decide anything. Below this opening you will find each of the four posts in full, newest first, so you can follow the reasoning in the order I developed it.

The dates on each post are when it was written, and I would read them with that in mind. If you are holding ICP and want a second look at your own position, you can get a personal video review from me at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.

ICP Is the Only Crypto That Lets Me Relax

From my video published July 7, 2026.

Crypto Doesn't Have to Be Stressful

Internet Computer Protocol is the only crypto that lets me just relax. Crypto does not have to be all stressful and panic-driven on a day-to-day basis. I'm just chilling. I'm not worried about the ICP price. I'm not checking charts. I'm not in my Coinbase account. And I'm going to show you a new way you can do crypto today, if you want what I have. What I have is peace of mind, relaxing, knowing I'm in the right place. Not being upset, not panicking. Does that sound like a good way to invest in crypto?

Well, that's the opposite of what I see most people doing in crypto. Most people I see in crypto are anxious, overly excited, afraid, insecure, overhyped. Sounds like my dating life, really. One day it's, oh my God, it's awesome. The next day it's, oh, this sucks. So I guess if I can get this in crypto, I can do it in my dating life too.

What I Used to Do: Buying Coins I Didn't Understand

What I used to do in crypto is buy all these coins I didn't understand. I would buy them without researching that much. And then that left me in fear — logical fear that I might lose my money. And then I would check the price because, well, let me see if I'm losing my money or not. At the same time, fear and excitement were very closely related. The feeling of fear and the feeling of excitement are very similar, if not identical, in the body. I would be bored in the rest of my life, and what I would do is buy some junk coin based on very little information.

Back in the day on Poloniex, you didn't even know what these coins were. There were no videos about them. You didn't know anything about them. You literally just saw the name of a coin and bought it. I would buy these coins and then go into my portfolio. That's the first time I bought XRP. I didn't know anything about XRP. It was practically worthless. And I just threw in — I don't know, a significant percentage of a Bitcoin — into XRP, just because it was what was trading that day. But then I'd have this anxiety about my portfolio and check it every day.

And I see a lot of people still doing this. You buy these coins that fundamentally suck, and there's a feeling that maybe you can get rich off this. But there's also a feeling that maybe you're going to lose your money. And you interpret this as excitement.

Crypto Addiction Is Real

What I've noticed is a lot of people are very addicted to crypto. Of course, if I put a thumbnail on YouTube or a title that says "addicted," it seems like it gets slightly shadow censored — or maybe the audience just doesn't like to think about addiction. But you need to think about this. I have a friend I got into ICP. He wanted me to buy his ICP back from him, but then he didn't sell. This guy checks Coinbase every day, and he's in there trading junk coins. I'm like, what are you doing? You know almost nothing about crypto. Why are you in Coinbase every day looking at coins you don't understand, trading coins, making Coinbase money, and then getting anxious about your ICP? What you need to do is delete Coinbase off your phone. That's not financial advice — that's just what I told my friend. I have a lot of ICP, and I'm chill about it.

A July 4th Party and a Dating-Life Realization

I was just having a conversation about this at an awesome July 4th party last night. Party at a rich dude's house — goals for me. This guy's got jet skis and paddle boards, a house right on the water. There were like 20 or 30 of us there. I was out on a paddle board for a while. We were playing water pong because it was a sober party, and it was awesome. It was fun. I had some great conversations. My dating coach was there, and another guy who's available to coach dating that I'm not working with right now, and some friends were there.

I'm like, what is going on with my dating life? And they're like, you're getting exactly what you want, man. I'm like, either I'm getting women that aren't interested in me — they're showing interest and then going away — or I'm getting women that are just nuts, and I'm trying to push them away but then I feel bad about it. They're like, well, you need to be more clear about what you're attracting and what's going on. What do you like about that? And I'm like, it's so exciting. Like this one woman recently — my friend who knows her is like, no, dude, stay away from her, she's wacky, don't go there. She's attractive and she loves my sense of humor, but my friend who's barely interacted with her is like, dude, something's wacky with that girl. And I'm like, but I feel something exciting with her — and I'm also afraid. When she flirts with me a little bit, I start to get afraid. I'm like, oh God, please don't like me. Stop liking me.

Those kinds of feelings are the exact same thing I see a lot of people doing in crypto. And I literally just realized, talking through this, that I've been able to consciously decide that I don't want to be addicted to crypto. I've reprogrammed my mind to stop being addicted to crypto. Pick the one coin that has an absolute rock-solid foundation, and then don't worry about it.

Dollar-Cost Averaging Toward 10,000 ICP

I'm still dollar-cost averaging into ICP every day. I'm thinking about hitting another credit card cash advance and buying another thousand ICP. I have 7,500 ICP worth in my account now, and I'm like, man, I'm so close to 10,000. At $100 ICP, if I can get to 10,000, I'll be a millionaire. So I'm thinking about pulling the trigger for another 1,000 ICP.

People ask me which other ICP content creators I watch. I actually don't watch very many, because most of their content is insanely repetitive with what I already know. The main two I watch: Bobby O — his content is not insanely repetitive with everybody else's, and it consistently gives extremely valuable information — and Blockchain Pill. I find his content entertaining, we talk every month so I'm always watching what he's doing, and I love his interviews. I hope he does more of them.

One viewer told me he hasn't checked Coinbase for a week. That's exactly how to do this. The first step, though, is awareness.

Awareness Comes First

When I was talking to my friends and my dating coach last night, we had this conversation about relationships, and they asked, why can't you just be open to having fun with somebody? I'm like, because I've never seen a scenario where that's what happens. Every scenario I've ever seen personally — not that big of a sample size, maybe 20 — every time, somebody has gotten all butthurt and emotional and it's been annoying. Whether it's been me or them, it's ended poorly every time in one way or another. I've never had some carefree fling that didn't leave a bad taste in somebody's mouth. As I talked it through with them, the first awareness was like, oh, this is what I'm unconsciously doing. I don't want to keep doing that anymore. I either want a very happy relationship with someone, or I'll take something casual that truly is fun and that's not just going to end badly and overall not be worth it. And I realized, oh, I just had this idea that you can't casually have fun.

So with crypto, what I'm hoping to plant in your mind — and I use these analogies to other subjects in life because crypto sounds so mathematical and esoteric, and you get all this junk in your mind about crypto this and crypto that, so I try to take it over to these other areas of life where you can step out of the crypto mindset and then come back — the first thing is realizing: if your relationship with crypto is not how you'd like it to be today, then how would you like it to be? You don't want an anxious attachment to crypto.

Price Versus Fundamentals

Someone asked me what I think ICP will be in two to three years. In my opinion, we have a very good shot to be over 100 in two or three years. Very good shot at that. By then, some of these governments like Pakistan and Switzerland are likely to have some more of their infrastructure up and running. Some of the things that have been setting up for years are going to have taken off, and then we'll have some price spikes. That's my belief, not investment advice.

Someone else said crypto is full of millennial gamblers. Exactly. And once you realize that's how you're using it, it's like — stop. No one can predict the price exactly, and what you need to look at is just fundamentals. I enjoyed Bobby O's recent video saying that many people's entire thesis would change 180 degrees based purely on the price. Right now, many people's only issue with ICP is the price. It's just the price chart. That's it. And as soon as the price chart changes, then all of a sudden, wow, this tech's amazing, this is going to change the world, we're going to rebuild the internet. But until the price goes up significantly, the thesis is: this sucks, there's no adoption, it's useless — because of the price.

You see, if your idea of something is purely based on the price, then you are not investing logically and reasonably. Because if you've really done your research and looked at ICP, the price is the opportunity. If the price and the opportunity were to match, ICP would be at least 10, if not 100 times higher in price, in my view. The fundamentals of the coin are as high as you could hope for, and the price is as low as you could hope for — the exact opposite of each other. That's the opportunity. It's the difference. But so many of us have been encouraged to look at certain data points and to focus on price as all that matters. You've been conditioned thousands, if not tens of thousands of times in crypto to just think of the price. And what you focus on tends to be what you get, like the law of attraction.

Somebody encouraged me not to ever stop, and I appreciated that, because I was pretty depressed yesterday morning. I went to an event Friday night and saw that woman I was talking about earlier — the one where it's, oh, I like her, but I'm afraid of her. This doesn't feel quite right, but it's exciting. It's familiar. I had a really up week focusing on my business.

From Depressed to Two July 4th Parties

Then yesterday, I was pretty depressed, but I went to two July 4th parties. One was an AA party and one was a community sober party at the rich dude's house. It was so much fun, and it got me thinking about all this stuff and talking about it. I'm like, I need to communicate this lesson in crypto.

Someone asked me: if you make money on ICP, will you gamble all the profit again? No. I will be paying down my debt and paying my rent. And Bitcoin Cash, in my opinion? Garbage. It's literally a fork of Bitcoin. Absolute trash — that's my opinion, not advice.

Buy Signals and Knowing When You Have Enough

I think we're very close to the bottom as well. I'm constantly getting buy signals. Whenever I do see the price, it's often at like 222, which to me is a little buy signal with the price being at all-time lows. But I don't need to constantly stack ICP either. I already have enough. At 7,500 ICP, when the price is $100, how much more do I need? Basically, any more than I'm buying at this point would be ICP I would sell sooner. If I buy a thousand today and it hits $10 or $20, I'd probably sell that. That'd be a couple, a few months of my rent, my bills, and paying down some debt.

I hope, for those of you that can honestly admit it — hey, you are going through crypto and making it stressful, and it doesn't have to be that way. If you can be honest with yourself and say, "I'm being addictive when it comes to crypto," then you can just stop. Because you can't make change until you're conscious first of what you're actually doing.

How do you know how much is enough? Well, I'd say: if the price hits $100, do you have enough ICP at that point? For me, at the current amount, I get about one and a half ICP a day staked. So that would be $150 a day without touching the principal — and that's just with 3,000-some ICP locked. To me, the amount that's enough is: how much would be a full-time income if you had that locked, off of the price being $100? At $150 a day for literally just selling my maturity, I'm already at a point where I have enough. Another way to think about it: how much would be enough if you sold half of it anywhere from $50 to $100 and kept the other half and took the rewards? Right now, I already have enough.

And I'm thinking this is the last chance to stock up on cheap ICP. Now, I know I thought that at $9 and $5 and $4 and $3 and $2. I don't think we're likely to go much lower, though. The lower it goes, the more even tiny amounts of buying power push it higher, and the more spot buying and real demand makes a huge difference.

Beware of Simple Explanations

Do I think Trump is the reason crypto as a whole is down? No, I don't think things are that simple, usually. A lot of us like to jump to the simplest explanation possible, but often the simplest explanation can make us feel good or feel like we understand, when there's so much more depth than that. It's naive to look at things so simply and think you kind of understand.

For example, if you've enjoyed my dating commentary, I've got some real bangers on my Jerry Banfield dating content. In a video I did recently, I researched and studied the 100 most recent dating videos from some of the top dating channels, and I did a four-hour live stream covering all kinds of dating advice that literally 100 different creators are giving right now. One of the big takeaways from that video was the sheer depth and complexity. A lot of us often search for these simple explanations — like, I should just do this or just do that. A lot of us are kind of scared to look at how complex things are in the background.

Crypto is the same — there are so many different things happening. I realize I am relatively clueless even with all the stuff I know. With the ICP price, there are probably a thousand things you could point to individually. For example: each individual crypto exchange — is there intentional derivatives manipulation? Do they have the exact amount of ICP they list? With crypto marketing — every single publication not covering ICP, every influencer posting about it, how people are approaching the chart, institutions aware of ICP — are they buying it? When are they going to buy it? And DFINITY — how much are they selling?

It's super naive when some of these people come along and say, well, DFINITY is just dumping all over us and that's why the price is down. I'm like, oh my God, that is such a simple explanation. Think about how you look coming in and saying that. It's like if I just walked into a room and announced I'm an idiot, and then walked out — people might think I'm funny, but nobody's going to pay to work with me when I come into a room and act like that. Imagine I come into a classroom to teach a class and say, "I'm an idiot, now let's learn." That's a lot of the vibe in crypto: these oversimplified programs in people's minds, like "ICP equals rug pull." That simple program is never questioned. They've taken that simple program on, and now their whole brain is "ICP rug pull." The test of intelligence, to me, is: can you look beyond those utterly simple memes you have in your mind? And once you can do that, then you can also afford to relax.

Genius Is Synthesizing Complexity into One Call to Action

When I was holding 50 different coins, it was such a mess looking at all the price charts every day, because I was emotionally invested in this one and that one. These five are up and these two are down. I'd track all my coins, put them all down, check my portfolio, and I'm like, this is so stupid. To me, genius is being able to take a huge amount of complex information and synthesize it into a very well-played call to action. So in my case, that means taking a gigantic amount of information and research — from thousands of altcoins, from 12 years in crypto, from conversations with hundreds of people all around the world about crypto on Zoom, on the weekly calls in Jerry Banfield Family. To me, genius is taking all of that information and giving you this: out of everything I've seen in crypto, all you need is ICP — and relax. Literally, you want to win the game: ICP and relax. DCA — not financial advice, just what works for me — and relax. And when you don't want to DCA anymore, then just wait until you want to do the opposite and start selling on a cost basis.

Why Is the Price Down, and What Could Send It Up?

Do I think Mission 70 will increase the price? I think Mission 70 is going to cut back on a little bit of the selling pressure, but selling pressure is not the main reason the price seems to be down, to me. There are a bunch of reasons the price is down. One of the key ones seems to be financial engineering: exchanges doing things like derivatives, irregular derivatives patterns, giant amounts of long liquidations. There are some irregular things happening with ICP. However, when ICP gets a certain level of adoption, the irregular things happening with the price are not going to be able to keep it down.

In fact, if what we saw three years ago is an indication of what will happen again: the price went from all-time lows under $3 and shot up to $12. Once I started covering it and we had a few SNS projects launch — that was a relatively small thing. One single crypto YouTuber switched and started covering it, then a few projects launched, so people bought ICP off exchanges to buy into those. It looked like a few million ICP were bought in a relatively short amount of time, and the price shot from $3 to $12-plus in a few months. There was no major announcement from DFINITY. None of the major crypto influencers or publications changed. From what I can see, none of the exchanges suddenly started being honest. None of the long liquidations or artificial stuff changed. So we could very easily have something like that happen again. And here's the thing: you're not going to have any more warning. You're not going to know when it's going to happen ahead of time. And this is why you can relax — because if you're in the right position, all you need to do is wait. Literally do nothing.

What do I suggest would trigger a bullish movement on ICP? There are a thousand scenarios where that could happen. Pakistan kicking a subnet on that cranks the burn rate up two or three times, for one. To me, one signal that ICP may be about to blow is whenever the cycle burn rate suddenly shoots up. But here's one you're already seeing: look at the block finalization rate. Something is happening there. The block finalization rate has more than doubled in the last year — there are 188 blocks a second now. The first thing I'd expect before the cycle burn rate shoots is the block finalization rate shooting up. That would mean more blocks being produced on these different subnets — more capacity, because every block, in the simplest terms, is capacity. You're kind of increasing the capacity, setting up the network to expand, and then you could start loading it more while the blocks stay about the same.

Seeing subnets increase, seeing more and more new subnets spinning up, seeing the cycle burn rate start to shoot up, the transactions — any of these data points suddenly shooting up are indications, especially sustained over time, like seeing transactions shoot up to 10-plus K and stay there consistently. Some of these could be very strong indicators that something is happening. But there are so many different data points, and none of that might actually provide warning, because there are so many variables. You could have one big buyer. Literally, some of the info I've gotten from my calls is that ICP is too small for people with big money — they don't even want to buy into it now because it's too small to even be interesting. It's so small that a billionaire, at least in theory, could buy most all the ICP off exchanges right now. So you could have one single outlier like that happen.

Take Off the Old Crypto Narratives

You could have one Michael Saylor come blasting into ICP and we could go to $10 almost immediately. And I would encourage you to take off all these other narratives. I see people talking about how crypto follows interest rates. While that may be valid for the rest of crypto, in my view ICP is an outlier. It is the first coin, to me, that truly has the potential to totally decouple from Bitcoin and be its own whole ecosystem. So I want to invite you to take off all your other crypto narratives for ICP. Stop even thinking of this as a crypto. Yes, it is a crypto — to me, it is the crypto. But you've been trained on all these other coins, over and over, to think a certain way: to focus on price, to follow authority signaling with things like interest rates and all that. These are things you've been told so many times that you believe they are real when they may not be. Your mind will spit out all this evidence for why the things you think are right are right. But ask your mind to give you some evidence that the things you think are wrong, are inaccurate, are very superficial, are not the most effective way to look at things.

And that's how you can relax with ICP. I don't pay any attention to what the Fed's doing. Interest rates, the stock market — none of that stuff matters to me here. This is a whole other animal. Its time will come when it's going to come, and it's not likely to be something you're going to know about ahead of time. Why would you know about it ahead of time? Well — if you're here, you already do know about it ahead of time. But it's not going to be something most people know about ahead of time. This will take most people by surprise. Most people won't even see ICP until it's probably $20, $30, $50, and then they're all going to wish they were in earlier.

Those of us who are in now have this idea that we should be able to see how things are going to work out. You're not. You can guess, you can predict — and I have all kinds of different theories — but you can just relax. Stop trying to predict exactly how it's going to happen, because you're not in control of that. I have my ICP. I create my videos. And I literally need to do nothing. My ICP can just sit in my account and earn interest, and I'm on my way to being a millionaire just off of ICP by itself. I don't need to understand anything else. I don't need to learn anything else.

The Main Thing Is to Not Screw This Up

Now, in my videos, I just try to help you not screw this up. Because at this point, the main thing is to not screw this up. If you've found ICP right now, to me it's just like finding Bitcoin 12, 13-plus years ago, like I did. All you have to do is not screw this up. And the easiest way to not screw up is to relax.

How do you relax? Well, if you're doing the opposite of relaxing, be aware of that. Stop checking that Coinbase app. Delete the Coinbase app off your phone if you can't stop compulsively checking it. You do not need to know what the price is on a day-to-day basis. It doesn't matter. If you're in the right position, the day-to-day price doesn't matter. What I noticed when I wasn't doing any content creation: I would go a month without seeing the ICP price, and it felt like everything was moving really quickly because I didn't look at the price every day. What makes it hard to relax is looking at the price every day and going, come on, what the hell's going on? We're operating on a much longer timeline. It may take five or ten years for ICP to fully reach its potential. And the best part is, you don't have to do anything. It's not up to you where this goes. You can help, you can influence, but it's not up to me where this goes either. This is essentially a ride I've gotten on — because, as some of the critics have said, I'm an opportunist who finds things ahead of time and gets in position, and then the opportunity just gets handed to me.

I think it's important to be patient with ICP. This is a 20-year investment in my mind. This is something I hold for the rest of my life. This is something that can pay me indefinitely. And anything that can pay you where you don't have to work is an absolute goldmine.

My Plan: Load the Bags, Then Compound

One viewer mentioned selling a very valuable baseball card collection for ICP — and hey, it's nice to sell something you're not really using. I've been taking cash advances to buy ICP because I believe I can make more money and I know I can pay off all my debt. And I just worked with AI today to make what I think is a brilliant business system. I've got four and a half million impressions on YouTube in 106 days now. And I realized I ought to have a little one-on-one call banner on the top of every thumbnail, because the click-through rate, even on the ICP videos you all like, is often only 10%. A lot of people have no idea that I run Jerry Banfield Family and no idea why they might want to join. Now I've even made a nice background to make that very clear. All I need to do is sell more one-on-one calls, and I'm going to print money like crazy — and there are so many people who need to be talked to.

I'm so relaxed about ICP. The only place I'm a little anxious: I would hate to not stock up as much of this as possible before the price shoots, because I just can't picture buying above $3 ever again — not when it's sat here under $3 for so long. I want to have my bags loaded by the time it goes over $3. And when it goes over $3, I just hold, compound my interest, and pay off debt with the money I make. Then when it goes over 5, 6, 8, 10, I might start taking loans on some of my liquid ICP. I'll send liquid ICP over, grab a loan against it. If the price plummets, I don't have to repay the loan. If the price shoots, then I just repay the loan and get my ICP back. That's my personal approach, not a recommendation.

Breaks are very important to see things clearly. When I took time off from ICP content, I saw things clearly. I'm like, everybody just needs to relax. This is just going to take a while. But that doesn't mean it's not going to happen.

Cloud Engines and Why Other Cryptos Make You Anxious

Do I think companies are going to use cloud engines? I see every reason for companies to use cloud engines. It's the perfect setup: instant computation, plus a very much needed extra, huge layer of security. It's proactive, preventative security, which is so much cheaper and more effective than trying to pay a security team. Cloud engines, to me, are an absolute game changer.

And not just that — everybody else in crypto looks to me like it's going to get hacked into oblivion. It makes sense if you're anxious holding these other coins. You have every reason in the world, if you're holding Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Hyperliquid, Cardano, to be anxious — in my opinion, those coins are extremely risky. All the infrastructure built up around them that's not on a blockchain is a very lucrative target for somebody with an AI model who wants to steal money. AI models can probe the entire system — probe the wallets, probe the websites, probe the databases. There are so many places. These cryptos are often a mess. Web2 is bad enough, but when you add a blockchain in — being able to steal money immediately, launder it, and have a higher probability of getting away with it — if you're holding anything besides ICP, I believe you're very vulnerable.

And that feeling — you should trust your feelings. If you're anxious checking your crypto portfolio every day, what do you have in there that's dangerous, that has no foundation, that's entirely hype and speculation? What I've found is when I get rid of all that crap, I relax. And that included a bunch of ICP ecosystem coins stacking up — like when I bought Tagger, then I started checking the Tagger price every day. I'm like, how dumb is this? I unloaded all these other altcoins to get away from that, and now I'm back in the middle of checking a price every day. How horrible. That's miserable. So I hope I can help at least one person relax. If I've done my job on that, it makes a big difference.

Where AWS Falls Short

AWS as a cloud provider does a great job for a lot of basic use cases today, yes. But for a lot of use cases, AWS does not do a great job. If you need your data to be secure — like a government or company, especially with sensitive things — if you don't want your data to be able to be spied on, if you want actual control over your data. For example, if you're hosting a video game on Amazon Web Services, that's all great unless they decide they don't want your game on their infrastructure anymore. Or if you want to take payments in the game, you have to connect some Stripe account.

I'm thinking about having a website I'll build with AI on ICP for dark comedy. That's a very clear use case where I wouldn't host it on Amazon, because they could very easily just take it off of there. And I'd also have to have PayPal or Stripe integrated — and if somebody didn't like my dark comedy, it'd be possible to get my Stripe or PayPal banned, which would be annoying. But I could put it on ICP. I don't have to worry about my payment accounts getting banned. I don't have to worry about the website getting taken down. And I can collect crypto payments that anyone with a Coinbase account could just buy, pay me, and I take the payments — there's no friction. So yes, a lot of things on the web work just fine with Amazon today. But right now, ICP is really attractive for all those things that don't work well on Amazon.

When ICP blows up, I'm really looking forward to it being a testimony. Yes, Amazon Web Services already has lots of contracts, that's true. But what is a government to do if they don't want to give their data to Amazon — a US-based company with laws saying the US can go through all their data whenever they feel like it, or pull the plug on it, leaving them totally reliant on Amazon? That might not be a problem if you're on great terms with the US. But what if you're not?

Do Your Own Research — AI Makes It Easy

Or what if you just want to have control yourself instead of surrendering control to somebody else? What if you want to build AI? Amazon Web Services is not a great setup for AI, because there's a whole bunch of problems with AI there — Bobby O will dive into that deeper.

When people ask me "When will ICP go up, or is it a scam?" — this is where you need to research much more thoroughly yourself. Literally just start asking ChatGPT to explain to you why ICP is different from everything else in crypto. If you're asking a question like that, you need to do more research. For example, I asked ChatGPT exactly that: explain to me what's different about ICP. You've got people saying it's a scam, but give me the truth about it. How important is it to the world? What are the technical details of how it works? How is it different from the rest of crypto? Are people saying ICP is great just scamming me, or is there something real here? I just dictated that to ChatGPT. You see how easy this is? These tools are easier than ever. I pay $200 a month now for ChatGPT — they got me on the big plan.

This is what you should be doing: your own research, asking higher-level, better questions. Those basic questions you can ask the AI, and you should research enough that a question like that, you've already thought about it and had it answered with significant depth. If you detect yourself asking really surface questions — questions that indicate there's no depth underneath — then go deeper right now yourself. AI makes it super easy. It does all the research; you don't even have to think. It looks through everything itself. Now, you do need to be able to differentiate — occasionally the AI will be blatantly wrong or inaccurate or drift on something, and you need to be able to check that out yourself.

What the AI Said About ICP

Look at what the AI told me. ICP is not just another coin — this is what the AI said. It's a real, technically unusual attempt to turn blockchain into a decentralized platform. Most networks are ledgers; ICP is trying to replace much more of the stack. It explained how ICP works: a smart contract plus the server plus a database. It uses reverse gas. The big importance: ICP is one of the few crypto projects trying to decentralize infrastructure, not just money. How it differs: Bitcoin and Ethereum are the basics; ICP hosts the whole app on chain. People call it mainly a scam because of the launch and the price collapse — the history is real enough to explain the anger — but here's an important distinction: a bad launch, ugly token distribution, controversy, and price collapse don't mean the protocol is fake.

Can people still scam using ICP hype? Possible. But the scam signal is promising guaranteed targets — and I'm not promising guaranteed targets. I think we're going toward 100, but there are certainly scenarios where this doesn't work out for one reason or another. I just don't think those are the main scenarios. The launch controversy was not within DFINITY's control as far as I can see, and it was created by the exact people who had every incentive to create it. And yeah, if you just talk about price, you can't separate the truth from the false. That's why I talk about the canisters, the cycles, the subnets, the chain key.

The AI's bottom line: ICP is the most technically ambitious project in crypto — and look at the market cap. ICP is real technology with an unusually large upside. That's how easy it is. The AI just gave you the exact information. And as more intelligent people get into crypto, as more pain happens in crypto, the more people are going to get out completely or ask better questions. And the more people ask better questions, ICP is going to surface — and these other cryptos are going to the bottom, in my view.

How is the government going to allow this much freedom? Well, we already have a lot of freedom in the USA, and there's no reason at this point we can't demand or welcome more freedom into our lives in terms of internet hosting. Which invention will take DFINITY to the top? Everything's already in place.

DFINITY's Quiet Strength: The NDA Theory

Somebody said it seems like there's low interest in ICP. So let's analyze: why does it seem like low interest? It seems like low interest because you're not aware of the interest that is there. If you look at my last two live streams — one of them inspired by a fantastic one Bobby O did; I swear half the time my live streams are pitched to be a member of Bobby O's channel — I covered "DFINITY's bad marketing is actually genius" and "ICP is the only real business in crypto."

What I talked about in those streams: it seems to me DFINITY has so much interest coming in, they literally don't want any more. They're doing the basic marketing on the surface so that people don't riot, and they are communicating what's happening. But it looks to me like the technology is so valuable, and people and governments and companies want it so bad, that there's a line of people waiting or working with DFINITY secretly under non-disclosure agreements — already paying DFINITY to help them figure out how to use all this technology. That's what it looks like to me.

You would think, well, why wouldn't they just announce all these partnerships and get the price to pump? Because they're not thinking about you, the token holder, and your profits as the number one driving business model behind everything they're doing. And that's different from the rest of crypto. The rest of crypto only cares about profits today — coin price, that's all that matters. DFINITY cares about getting this technology set up around the world, because they know they're in a position where — not a guaranteed win per se, but where the odds are stacked so heavily in their favor there's no alternative. All they need to do is get governments and enterprises using this technology. And the governments and enterprises appear to be paying them to help set it up. So DFINITY has every incentive to keep this stuff quiet, because they're already making money doing this.

You might think, well, why aren't they shouting from the rooftops about all these companies? Dominic Williams has hinted and mentioned that there are enterprises lined up for cloud engines. Look through his posts — he seems to have said as much as he can say, that there are enterprises waiting for cloud engines. It seems to me they're in such a position of strength, they don't need the price to pump. They're already making money directly by getting this technology integrated. All these other coins have to have the price pump to survive. If your tech is this good, it looks like you can pay a lot of your bills just by getting paid to help with the tech.

A Ticking Price Explosion

So again, this is a scenario where you can just relax. Because yes, at some point the lid is going to come off. At some point the non-disclosure agreements will be revealed, or the terms of those will be open to the public. But it's probably going to happen when something substantial is fully built out and functioning. Let's say Pakistan launches their national messenger app and everything is working — then that may be announced, and all of a sudden the price may go from $2 to $20 to $50 rapidly. The upside of the price suppression is that since the price appears to be artificially low right now, when it does break out, it may break out absurdly and unbelievably high. So I think with ICP, you're sitting on a ticking price explosion, the way I see it. It literally could happen any day. Now, "any day" could be next year, or the year after.

That's why I said watch the data. You see that cycle burn rate shoot up and stay there — and it's not like Bob or some app where you know what's burning, but you're like, what the hell is burning? You see the blocks keep climbing up and up, you see the subnets starting to expand, you see cloud engines getting released — there's every indication that we're in the right position now.

One viewer said, "I don't mind that we haven't pumped — I want more time to accumulate." Me too. Because as soon as the price pumps, your time to accumulate is over. Based on human psychology, you've anchored the price in at two dollars. When it's $5, it's going to look really high to you, and you'll think, well, I'll just buy more when it comes back down. But then it'll go to $10, and you're like, I guess I'm not buying more at this point. Now is the time I'm loading up. I look at it as: this is my last chance to accumulate ICP. So far, I've been wrong on that. But it'll only take one little thing happening, and then I'm right. And that's what's exciting. Until ICP mass adoption, until something big is active on it, there may not be much that happens. And DFINITY at this point seems so confident that they don't even seem to be trying to make anything happen. I would love to see the ICP price back over 10 by the end of the year — but I would also love to see the ICP price stay down until I've got as much as I want.

From Famine to Feast

Someone pointed out that countries are starting to use ICP, but the price isn't going up. That's because they have to build out the infrastructure and test everything first, and that takes quite a while. But once that infrastructure is built out and the switch gets flipped on, all of a sudden you may go from nothing to a lot at once. This is how life often is — you go from nothing to too much at once. I have zero women I'm dating right now. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm talking to you soon and there are four or five women all interested in me at once, all wanting to go out with me. That's often how life is. And that's how you can relax: just understand that sometimes there are periods of apparent famine, and that's opportunity for ICP. There are downsides to each scenario — as soon as ICP pumps, you don't get to accumulate. And at these prices, you get to accumulate.

Why I Want More Time to Accumulate

I personally would like some more time to accumulate more than I want the price to pump, because the price pump is likely to be final. Maybe it goes to 5 or 10 and comes back down a bit in the short term. But there's going to be a takeoff point where it never even gets close to 5 or 10 again. And if you haven't bought by then — it's like Bitcoin. You don't get to buy Bitcoin for 170 anymore. That is gone forever. And I agree with the idea that all the cryptos that want to live will follow ICP.

This Is Not Speculation — I Use the Technology Every Day

Here's the thing about what's different: I'm not just relying on other people talking. Someone said that relying on data and a CEO's word sounds like speculation. It would be — but here's the difference. I actually have my website hosted on the blockchain, and that's what's different. This is doing a very practical thing that is very valuable, and I'm interfacing with the command line. I just rebuilt my whole website on the blockchain today — a brand new version. It hardly burned any cycles to update it like 10 times. The website has around 1,900 assets on it — like 900 blog posts plus the thumbnails that go with them. I've got a long-form sales page on there. Do you understand that this eliminates using something like ClickFunnels? It eliminates using something like Leadpages. Do you understand that if I go viral again, I have enough cycles that I could probably take 100,000 page visits through this website? Do you understand how big of a deal that is in web hosting?

This is why you ideally need to get into the tech, into the wallet, into the Network Nervous System yourself. Do you understand what a big deal it is that I just dump a video into a folder and Claude cranks out a website and it goes straight to the blockchain? That's not speculation. This is technology I'm using every day that blows me away. When I go to the Network Nervous System and I'm voting — Lorimer beat me to it on the thing I was going to vote on today — I'm using the technology. That's not speculation. That is actual use of the technology.

The Visceral Difference of ICP

I'm technically savvy enough that I can just feel how things work. I've been on video games and computers for 30 years — even longer than that, really. I love using these AI models; I can feel how they're working, and then I play with them. I have this visceral understanding of what's happening that's hard to even explain sometimes. When I first used Internet Computer Protocol, I had this visceral reaction: why does this feel so advanced? When I'm using ICP, I can feel the technology. Using the blockchain, it is so far advanced past anything else in crypto, in my experience, that everything else in crypto looks useless. When I interfaced with Ethereum chains and Avalanche and Solana, those all felt the same — incredibly basic and clunky. But when I started actually getting on the blockchain and using ICP, I'm like, holy cow, this feels a decade past everything else. That is not speculation. That is a visceral interaction — me getting in there and interfacing personally with the technology. And that's what's different about ICP. You can't do that with the other stuff. You can't just go interact with these other blockchains the way you can with ICP — you'd have to pay gas fees, it's expensive, it's a mess. These other blockchains are, in my opinion, so bad.

So that's what you need to do: use the tech yourself. And if you want help with that, join Jerry Banfield Family and I can walk you through getting your website on ICP. I can help you get Claude Code set up on your computer so you can put your own website on ICP and you don't have to take my word for it. I can help you get in there, take your crypto off of Coinbase, use the Network Nervous System, stake it, and set your wallet up.

What's important with ICP is that you can actually use it and verify the functionality yourself. And the functionality I'm using personally — if you extrapolate that to the corporate and government level, it's a big deal. I love having my website on ICP because it's not going to crash when I go viral. Some hacker can't just bust into my WordPress account. I don't have to keep doing WordPress updates all the time. I don't have to pay $50 or $100-plus a month just to have a server that could handle the capacity of a few thousand people coming through in a day. Just that by itself — extrapolate that, and the gigantic waste of that same basic setup for governments, plus all the additional security problems from having sign-ins — all the signs are there for you.

Wrapping Up: All In, Leading by Example

If you want to talk with me directly, you can join Jerry Banfield Family and bring it to a weekly call.

Somebody joked that when ICP pumps, I'll start attracting ICP gold diggers. I will. I would love to find a woman before ICP blows up, because then I'll have a better indication she actually loves me for me. Once I've got my fat ICP wallet, I won't know if she really loves me or just loves all the money I have from ICP.

On the ICP DEX: yes, they're building their own version of Hyperliquid — except Hyperliquid isn't actually decentralized, from the analysis I've shared. The ICP one can be set up — that doesn't mean it will be, but it can be set up — to have much greater decentralization. And keep in mind, the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains are so simple they're relatively easy to understand. Bitcoin is like a spreadsheet: there's a math problem to add the newest line, and it takes all the transactions people have submitted and adds that new line when the math problem is solved. Bitcoin is ridiculously simple, at least in the big view.

One of my regulars said once ICP blows up, he'll have to make a career change. Yeah — ICP blowing up could actually have some downsides to my life too. All the women will just be wanting me for my money, and I might have so much money I need to hire a bodyguard or something. Every situation has its ups and downs. So I'm very interested in experiencing the ICP pumping scenario. I'm confident that's where we're headed. Not certain — but I'm all in on this personally, with everything I know. And the best I can do is lead by example. (And no, prenups don't work that well.)

It's been a pretty chill conversation today, and I hope I've helped at least one person relax with their crypto. If you want to keep going deeper on Internet Computer Protocol, you'll find all of my videos on it in my ICP Crypto playlist. Much love, and have a great day.

My Friend Almost Sold 10,000 ICP… Then We Talked

From my video published June 15, 2026.

My Friend Came Over to Sell His Stack

My friend almost sold his 10 000 ICP that I talked about recently in my video, should I borrow $20 000 to buy 10 000 ICP, which might have also cost me a date. But that's okay because I got lots more of those. And my friend only has his 10 000 ICP. So he came over to my house this morning because he said, hey, I want you to help me list this on ID Geek and get it sold. So I sat down with him and we started to talk about it. And I said, why do you want to sell right now? He said, well, they just cut the APR from like 13 or whatever it was before down to six.

And I can get 6 APR in lots of other places like stocks, real estate, whatever, et cetera. I'm like, hold on, you're not looking at the big picture of this. And I said, the big picture of this is that you're sitting on potentially one of the most asymmetric investments I've ever seen in my life. And obviously this isn't financial advice. And I have tens of thousands of dollars of ICP myself. And I'm just out here with Jerry Banfield's shirt on, on one of six YouTube channels talking shit. So I talked to him and I said, wait a minute, let's look at this. If, all right, if things go where I think they're going with ICP, that this thing is crazily undervalued, at least 10 times at a bare minimum, if not 100 plus times undervalued, you're sitting on $10 000.

You're sitting on $10 000 ICP, which really should be worth at least $100 000, if not $300 000, okay? Don't fucking Jimmy me, Jules, okay? So this is potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ICP in the future. Now you're going to continue getting 6 interest regardless of whatever the baseline ICP is worth. So if it's worth $29 000 today, you're going to get 6 on that. If it's worth $290 000 in the future, you're going to get 6 on that. And that, you're not going to do fucking around in the stock market. You're not going to do that messing around with real estate.

You're not going to get a 10 or maybe 100x on something and then sit there and get the same APR on the unrealized capital gains. This is where I caught his attention. He said, wait, what do you mean by that? I said, unrealized capital gains.

Why Unrealized Gains Change Everything

These are gains that you haven't sold, which in the United States, you do not have to pay tax on. So let's say that ICP goes to where it should. And my friend gets to a million dollars worth of internet computer protocol that he paid about $54 000 for on average. That he was about ready to dump it for 20 000 to me. And today it kind of looks like I should have bought it right here. Just give me that 10 000 ICP for $20 000 and I'd have made, $9 000 already. But I decided, look, I've already got so much ICP. I have 6 700 ICP.

Plus I have this whole ICP channel. Plus I have this crypto reviews channel where I just talk, I shit on other coins that fucking suck. And check out this roasting ton coin. This is going to be my new format. Just, just lasering into these and going for like comedy instead of, trying to take this seriously. All right.

If you want to follow how I think about all of this in one place, I keep every breakdown in my my ICP Crypto playlist.

Why I Passed on Buying His ICP

So I already have enough invested in ICP. Not just money, but what do you think is going to happen to my channel if ICP blows up? Well, Bobby O would tell you that a bunch of other shit fluencers are going to step in and make ICP channels themselves. And they're going to control the conversation about ICP. Still, I'll still probably 10X and get a whole bunch of views in that scenario. And I might get drowned out by some of the bigger voices. But when ICP goes where I think it's going to go, it's going to be great for me anyway. Well, I was really just trying.

I was trying to talk about my friend, but I lasered off into talking about myself. So back to him. I said, unrealized capital gains. This could be worth a million dollars one day, at which point you'd be getting $60 000 plus a year in interest. You're not going to fuck around in the stock market making $60 000 a year in pure profit, sitting there with a million dollars in unrealized capital gains. Technically, it might be like $960 000. Or $50 000 or something like that, okay? So I explained to him, I'm like, you're sitting on something that has huge asymmetric upside. He's like, well, I already have like $10 000. If you're staring down a hold-or-sell moment like my friend was and you want to think it through out loud with someone before you act, you can book a private call with me and we'll walk through your own situation together on our call.

I just need a little bit more to close this real estate deal. I'm like, well, look, look at it this way. I'm sure you can scrounge around and find $10 000 more.

The Real Estate Trade That Would Haunt Him

But you dump your ICP and this shit goes up to like $20 per ICP, which would be a tiny little pump compared. Would you, how would you feel sitting there looking at, you dumped an account for $20 000 for some real estate deal that then would be sitting there at $200 000. And now that's paying you times 6%. That's paying you $12 000 a year in interest. You can fuck around and dump the account for the amount of interest you could get in the future. And he's like, oh, that'd be really stupid, wouldn't it? I'm like, yes, you've already lost 30, when I was 20, or whatever, he's lost tens of thousands of dollars already in the value of it.

And if he dumps it right now, he's not even going to be able to really use those losses to offset whatever other money he's making, because you can only write off so many losses a year. But he can make profit off the unrealized capital gains. And if it goes to zero at this point, which I think is unlikely, but you still have to accept that possibility. If it goes down further, it's like, well, shit, there's no, you're, you're just in, you're in now for the long haul. And the upside is so possibly high that there's no point in getting out now. Like getting out now is insane.

Like you're just fucking yourself. And I'm like, well, that's all I've been doing lately, but I'm going to put up a hinge profile. Okay.

The Dating Tangent I Couldn't Resist

I'm going to put up a hinge profile and I got a brand new Jerry Manfield dating channel, which is great for a guy that hasn't got laid in six months. I'm going to put up a dating channel. I just got a new dating channel up there. Shit's not even in YouTube search yet, but there's, at Jerry Manfield dating. And if you want dating is going to all go on this new channel and we're going to just talk that. So I'm going to be getting laid at some point, but why the fuck did we go off on this tangent again? All right, here's the new channel.

Don't Sell at the Worst Possible Time

But the bottom line is don't fuck yourself by selling ICP at the worst time to do so. Everything in crypto right now, that definitely wasn't financial advice. Our world is so stupid we live in. Like, let me just shove. A disclaimer up this videos and and then it's all fine, right? Just anything else I say, because clearly this is more entertainment and education than telling you what to do. So I, I'm now I'm back on thinking about fucking myself. Don't fuck yourself. This is what I've, some guy emailed me. It's like Jerry, you told me about ICP and I bought it and all this. And then I sold it cause you're full of shit.

I'm like, you're a dummy bitch for selling right now. Yeah. I didn't tell you to fucking sell right now. Did I? You did that shit yourself. You got to appreciate this whole crypto environment is heavily. It's just like a psyop to extract value from people. And if people get more intelligent, that's going to stop. And I'd like to bet that people are going to get more intelligent. And we're seeing signals like Bobby shown recently in his video. When you have companies, these six Anderson Horowitz, whatever, they're actually talking about, Oh, we need these things while they're planting seeds. It shows that whatever they're saying publicly, clearly they see, I'd hope they would see a little bit further ahead than whatever they're saying publicly, except my silly ass, just sitting here saying everything I see publicly instead of jerking people around and taking all their money and then switching what I need to say after I made myself as much money as possible.

Maybe I'm the dummy bitch. Who's not just making as much money. For myself as I could, instead of stealing from other people until I've got the house and the car that I feel I deserve. And what were, what worth is that shit when you die anyway? Damn, this shit went off on a hell of a tangent. Well, ultimately this should be entertaining because I'm saying the same shit every day. And at this point we just need to help being patient and I'm glad I could help my friend be patient because he about fucked up today. But fortunately without me, he doesn't know how to sell the account without me.

And putting it on ID geek at this point is like the worst thing you could do in my opinion, which this shit's all my opinion, isn't it? Oh, not, not another Pulp Fiction quote. There's nothing you're going to say. It's going to make me forget that I love my wife. Is there, there's nothing you're going to say. It's going to make me forget that I love ICP. Is there like, come on, this is a time to hang on. This is a time where the darkness is before the light. Yeah. And this is like a religion. He's just up here preaching a sermon every day. Yes.

This is how we practice faith in real life. And a lot of us have been stripped from our religions. So we fucking get a coin and then this is our, our new idol. But this is an exciting opportunity that we found. And I remember finding Bitcoin in 2014 and fucking that up because I wasn't patient. And same thing with Ethereum. Yeah. I'm thinking I could buy it lower. You may not be able to get ICP lower ever again. And I know I said that at $3 and it went down to two, but at some point either I'm going to be right. Or the world's going to be so fucked that nothing matters.

This is exactly the kind of patience I love to reinforce on my calls, where holding through the noise is the whole point, so if you want that, you can set up a call with me.

Okay. Those are like the two basic choices we have here. Either the world goes to shit and fuck it. Who cares what you do? Or we're going to logically progress to better technology. It solves a shitload of problems. And everybody holding ICP that can hang on is going to be filthy stinking rich. Or third basic path, some other big tech company will release their own solution. And the longer that doesn't happen, the more things are in favor of ICP.

ICP Has First-Mover Advantage Like Bitcoin

Because like Bitcoin, if somebody else would have came out and sniped Bitcoin on like day one, like it's 2009, whoever dude at the CIA that invented, because Satoshi Nakamoto is like central intelligence and Japanese. So whichever guy at the CIA was inventing Bitcoin and putting that out there, imagine if somebody else like sniped it right after that. And they're like XRP bitch. And like day two, you got Bitcoin and XRP like day two. Now imagine then like 80 other blockchains immediately all came out and you're like, fuck, I don't even know which one of these was the first. Like this came out day one and day two, you had some shit coin like XRP.

And then day three, well, XRP was actually pretty cool when it came out. When it came out, you could send transactions faster than Bitcoin. Like, oh, fuck, that was a big deal. But now is all it can do is send transactions. That's lame. ICP has got first mover advantage at this point. And it's been out five years, which is basically in the Bitcoin timeline, 2014. Things have went really well for Bitcoin since 2014. Although I think we've kind of hit its peak. Because once you got ICP. Bitcoin's like, it's just a collector's token at this point. It's just a meme coin like, oh, this is cool.

It's the first crypto, but it doesn't do shit. Except let people trick you into holding it for you, which is fucking stupid. Not your keys. It's somebody else's crypto bitch. So ICP is in a really fantastic position today. And this just made my day that my friend came over and I didn't even think of like talking him out of it. Like I'm going to definitely talk him out of it. And I'm proud of him for being open because some of us just get lasered in. We're just going to fucking do this. And this is how I was today. I was going to yoga, and I'm all single and shit.

And I'm going to yoga and I'm like, I am going to yoga. Jerry Banfield robot is set. I'm going to yoga at Beachtown autopilot. Then this hot girl comes up and I've got a fucking Jerry Banfield shirt on, because that's how I roll. And she's like, oh, what's that say on your shirt? And I'm like the Jerry Banfield show. She's like, oh, cool. And I look at her shirt. I'm like, what does your shirt say? Like great time or some shit. She had some shirt on this, like, great vibes or some kind of shirt like that. And so this hot girl just opened me. She started talking to me first.

She smiled at me. She looked at me. She opened me. But my silly ass is in like autopilot where I'm like, all right, bye. I'm going to yoga. I'm like, you're going to yoga? She's like, no, I'm going to coffee. I'm like, well, see ya. Then I walk into yoga class. I'm like, I'm a dummy, bitch. What the? What the fuck was that? I should have dropped this yoga class and still probably be at coffee with this girl. But this is what people are doing in crypto is getting this tunnel vision of like this guy said, this coin is going to go up and XRP is going to hit $10 000.

It's fucking stupid. Or, ICP is down and it's shit. And maybe these other people are right. And maybe they actually are doing things on chain on near. Fuck. Bullshit. What's your fucking kidding me, man? So I think swearing is worth it for a little comedy, for a little extra energy. I know how to talk like this without cursing, but I think it just makes it more fun. So I appreciate all the likes. And I appreciate that my friend was not in tunnel vision this morning that he's like, should I you should I do this? I'm like, no, because I can't stand to look at you.

If ICP goes to 20 bucks, nothing. Need some advice. Just God, Tony, what's going to happen? I was only kidding. So imagine me seeing my friend when ICP is up to $20 and I poached it off him for fucking 20 000 for 10 000 ICP. See, what's what I'd like to think is different from me is that I give a shit about other people. And I think that's normal. I think most of us actually do give some level of a fuck about other people. But where we go wrong is when it comes to money. As soon as we go wrong, we go wrong. As soon as it comes to money, we're all like, fuck you, bitch.

I'm going to get all my shit for myself. I'll go to people like be so loving and nice and kind and the rest of their lives and then go take everybody else's shit at work. It's like, well, if I'm at work, I'm just I'll take everybody's money. I don't care. Just give me all your money. I don't care what I have to do for it. And that's the rest of crypto. So right now, ICP is where it's at. And my friend was thinking about selling because the price has been artificially suppressed because nearly everyone in crypto is a fucking liar. Liar or an ignorant dummy.

Either way, the majority of crypto is people lying and stealing and cheating, and they don't give a shit about anybody. And they're like, I'm going to steal from these idiots as long as I possibly can. And they deserve it because they're so stupid that they're letting me do it. If they weren't that dumb, they wouldn't let me do it. Therefore, it's OK for me to do it. It's legal for me to do it. So I'm going to just steal from them. That's like all the crypto, like all the layer one blockchains, all the foundations, all the publications, all the influencers outside of like me, Bobby O, Blockchain Pill, Sea Order Hero, and fuck whoever else I forgot.

Sorry. Whoever else I forgot. All right. That's basically everybody but us is just ripping all of crypto off right now. But there's real technology. The world needs it. And there's going to come a time where the pressure from the rest of the world, needing ICP will outweigh all the liars and cheaters, and then they'll just immediately switch what they're saying. Oh, yeah. We are. We covered ICP five years ago. And yeah, we were just, talking about these other coins and they all went down. They're all rugs. So fuck. We're going to make some coins on ICP. And ICP is awesome. And we've been telling you that the whole time.

See, here's a post from 2021 when it launched where I said it's great. And yeah. No, buy eight of my shit coins on ICP today and you'll be rich. Like that's that we're here. Don't do it. Don't fuck this up. Like, that's what we're trying to do today is just stay here and not get thrown out of our position. I told my friend, I said at this point, I'd rather my ICP go to zero than me sell it. And it rockets up because I sold my I marketed Dash. God damn it. Shut up. Finish this video already. All right. One more thing I saw.

The Dash Mistake I Still Regret

I bought 10 000 Dash when I was one of the largest crypto YouTubes in the world. I looked at Dash. I'm like this little shit coin. I'm going to pump this. And my friend, he he's told me he's like, this is awesome. Let's pump this. So we both bought he was in Dash. I bought 10 000 Dash. I took all the money I had, which unfortunately was $10 000 that I could afford to lose. And I did. I was the primary income provider for my family also doing YouTube. So I bought all this. I put $11 000 in Dash on Christmas 2016. And I'm like, all right, let's do this.

I promoted Dash to millions of people over the next five months and it went to $87. I'm like, all right, it's probably, it just 8x in a few months, mainly off of me promoting it. Mainly. Nobody else is doing shit. Who put this thing together? Me. That's who. Who do I trust? Me. I pumped that shit 8 7x myself. And then I figured, fuck them. You know what? They don't want to give me more money to keep promoting this shit. Fuck them. I'll find another coin. I'll pump that. And then Dash went up another 10 plus x from there. And I felt like a moron.

And it didn't matter that I made $100 000 pushing other garbage ass coins that a lot of people lost money on. I felt so stupid that I sold my Dash, even though I sold it. I literally made $77 000. I sold my Dash in five months off of one coin. Now, in most cases, you'd think I should have just been patting myself on the back. Like, damn, I'm a smart motherfucker. That's right. Yeah. Does all this guy do is say Pulp Fiction quotes? I haven't watched Pulp Fiction in a decade. It's just buried in here that deep. I felt so stupid for years for selling my Dash when it went from 87 to like over a thousand.

That regret is why I now measure everything against the long timeline, the same way I do in 21 Bitcoin in 2014 Is 550 ICP Today.

And to me, the worst thing that can happen with ICP is that you found this and then you exit it. And then when it goes, if possibly in some timeline, it goes to where it's going to go. And you see that shit a year, two years, five years down the road, and you're like, oh my God, I had 10 000 ICP. I'd be a millionaire now. And I fucking dumped it for a few thousand. Like to me, the biggest regrets in life are not about going for things, which reminds me, I need to be asking more girls out. Because I don't regret getting rejected. I regret not trying.

I regret this morning that I should have just went to coffee with this girl. I should have, if I wanted to still go to yoga, I was like 10 minutes early for the class. I could have just walked with her and kept talking to her and then asked for her phone number. If she says no, it doesn't matter. Because I'm not left at home wondering what might have happened when some hot girl actually opened me in a fucking plain ass t shirt that said the Jerry Banfield show on it. So, I don't know. This is not happening. Let's get this right. I'm so proud of my friend today.

I'm so proud of everyone in ICP that hasn't sold and for love of God, hold onto this shit and just stay on the ride because it'll be interesting to see who dumps prematurely. I know who's going to dump prematurely, but at least I can go multiple times after that. Like we can do this shit all night. But I'm talking to a bunch of dudes right here. So this is really, I need, maybe, maybe I can get some girls to step in a pool. All right, let's wrap this up. Thank you. I hope this is entertaining. If I make my videos like this, nobody confuse it with financial advice, would they?

Picture this in court, just playing this whole video. Like he was giving financial advice. Like he said, dummy bitch, like 10 times in the video. He said, fuck, like 82 times. How would you think of that as financial advice? More like standup comedy. It should tag it standup comedy. And he just likes hearing himself talk. All right, now I'm done.

ICP Holding: Why Being Bored in Crypto Means You're Doing It Right

Originally published October 29, 2024.

ICP Is the Only Crypto That Lets Me Relax

From my video published July 7, 2026.

Crypto Doesn't Have to Be Stressful

What I Used to Do: Buying Coins I Didn't Understand

Crypto Addiction Is Real

A July 4th Party and a Dating-Life Realization

Dollar-Cost Averaging Toward 10,000 ICP

One viewer told me he hasn't checked Coinbase for a week. That's exactly how to do this. The first step, though, is awareness.

Awareness Comes First

Price Versus Fundamentals

From Depressed to Two July 4th Parties

Buy Signals and Knowing When You Have Enough

Beware of Simple Explanations

Genius Is Synthesizing Complexity into One Call to Action

Why Is the Price Down, and What Could Send It Up?

Take Off the Old Crypto Narratives

The Main Thing Is to Not Screw This Up

My Plan: Load the Bags, Then Compound

Cloud Engines and Why Other Cryptos Make You Anxious

Where AWS Falls Short

Do Your Own Research — AI Makes It Easy

What the AI Said About ICP

DFINITY's Quiet Strength: The NDA Theory

A Ticking Price Explosion

From Famine to Feast

Why I Want More Time to Accumulate

This Is Not Speculation — I Use the Technology Every Day

The Visceral Difference of ICP

Wrapping Up: All In, Leading by Example

If you want to talk with me directly, you can join Jerry Banfield Family and bring it to a weekly call.

My Friend Almost Sold 10,000 ICP… Then We Talked

From my video published June 15, 2026.

My Friend Came Over to Sell His Stack

Why Unrealized Gains Change Everything

If you want to follow how I think about all of this in one place, I keep every breakdown in my my ICP Crypto playlist.

Why I Passed on Buying His ICP

I just need a little bit more to close this real estate deal. I'm like, well, look, look at it this way. I'm sure you can scrounge around and find $10 000 more.

The Real Estate Trade That Would Haunt Him

Like you're just fucking yourself. And I'm like, well, that's all I've been doing lately, but I'm going to put up a hinge profile. Okay.

The Dating Tangent I Couldn't Resist

Don't Sell at the Worst Possible Time

This is exactly the kind of patience I love to reinforce on my calls, where holding through the noise is the whole point, so if you want that, you can set up a call with me.

ICP Has First-Mover Advantage Like Bitcoin

The Dash Mistake I Still Regret

That regret is why I now measure everything against the long timeline, the same way I do in 21 Bitcoin in 2014 Is 550 ICP Today.

Being Bored in Crypto Is a Sign of Success

From my video published July 20, 2024.

Being bored in crypto is a sign of success. The more I do crypto, the more crypto has gotten extremely easy for me. And that's because I've cut through the confusion. If crypto seems hard and difficult, in my experience it's because you've been stuck in a fog, you've been tricked. Once you get out of that, crypto actually gets extremely boring. Literally, I hold the Internet Computer Protocol, and for the easiest approach I stake it, and I don't need to do anything else.

Some of you check the price all the time. I don't do that, because I feel like I've already made the best investment I could make today. I don't even need to watch anything. If I wasn't a crypto YouTuber, I would hardly keep up with crypto at all. I'd leave my money in ICP and I'd go on with my life. To me, crypto is really easy once you find a place where there's some real technology and a real team, like the Internet Computer Protocol. But crypto seems really hard if you're trying to gamble and trade.

If you're bored, you're not gambling

So if you're bored, that's a good sign that you're not gambling or trading. If you don't think crypto is boring, if you think crypto is really hard, then the reason for that, in my opinion, is that you are trading, you are gambling, and you are doing something that you are more than likely not equipped to be successful at.

I know sometimes that lands as, "Oh, you're telling me I'm not going to do good at crypto trading, that this isn't for me." Yes, I'm telling you that. And the opportunity in it is to find something better to do with your life. Because my thought is: can I just give you the information you really need in crypto so that you don't need all the rest?

In all my videos about the Internet Computer, I've tried to make it incredibly clear. This is a real-world computer. It's compute on blockchain. I've done so much research that it's just repetitive at this point to talk about why this is 90% of my portfolio, why it's so obvious to me, and why it's so much different than everything else. But once you know that, it makes the rest of crypto easy. To me, almost every altcoin is a loop, a dumpster fire, money down a toilet compared to the Internet Computer. I share more of that research in my ICP Crypto playlist, and it's the same reason I keep saying that crypto market caps are a distraction and only ICP is real.

Excitement is the addiction

The thing is, there's no excitement with the boring approach. And if you're used to excitement, that's a problem, because a lot of us who are attracted to crypto are alcoholics. I'm sober 10 years now. We're addicts. I was addicted to gambling. I'm glad I haven't placed a bet in a long time. The closest thing I've placed to a bet was buying a meme coin last year, which I managed to lose 60% on in just a few days. And I'm like, oh, that was exciting, and I didn't like it.

To me, doing crypto right is doing crypto in a way that's boring, that's easy. If you've read a book called Everyday Millionaires, everyday millionaires are generally, in terms of finance, boring people who make logical, well-researched investments. Meanwhile crypto is being presented to you as this thing that, with all these fire thumbnails and "game over for Bitcoin" and "this dumpster fire is going to 100x," is so exciting. But it's so much simpler and so much easier than that.

What can be hard, though, is that excitement can be addictive. So I'm going to give you an idea of how you can aim at being bored in crypto. I want you to be so bored at crypto you don't even look at a price chart for a week. I want you to be so bored with crypto you stop watching crypto videos, even if they're mine.

Most people who are in crypto are obsessed with just keeping you entertained, keeping you interested and excited. That's why so many creators in my position constantly present you one coin after another, after another. It's exciting because you realize you're probably going to lose money in this, but you're hoping you can beat the odds, which most of you don't. And even if you do, that's actually bad, because then you think you're smarter than everybody else. You'll see the truth eventually. It's like gambling: anybody can gamble here and there and win, but almost everybody who gambles financially is a loser. You lose time and you lose money.

Even if you're like me — I used to have a 60% win percentage at Heads Up Hold 'em — that didn't hold up if I got into the highest-stakes games, and I was earning a whopping $3 an hour. So way to go. You're sitting on your computer by yourself, grinding out $5 Heads Up Hold 'em games, earning $3 an hour. Way to do something useful for the world.

Why projects want crypto to feel complicated

Crypto is so easy that most people can't tell you how easy it is, because they're afraid of losing you as a viewer. Most of these projects want crypto to be complicated, because if you could see through to the truth — that their project is a copy of a copy of a copy, and that their tech is boring — you'd walk away. That's why a lot of these projects always flaunt either the simplest little narratives, like "it's a fair AI crypto" or "it's a fair-launch crypto," that are basically emotional tricks, emotional traps. Or, on the other end, they'll use all these technical terms. You know, "it's a ZK Starknet 5-trillion-X rollup," and it does this, and it does that, and I'm like, ugh. You don't need to get into all that. To me, the one question that matters is: is the technology far superior to everything else?

Internet Computer? Yes. Everything else? No. Is the team a superstar team in a foundation that you can clearly see, with people putting out videos? Internet Computer? Yes. Everything else? No. That's how I think about it, and it's why I'm convinced 99% of crypto is theft and only 1% is real.

"Jerry, where do I get the excitement?"

So what do you need to do now? You might be thinking, "Okay, Jerry, I would love to be super bored in crypto, but where do I get the excitement?" Because what's surprising is how addictive excitement is. If you're used to getting off on watching your meme coins go up or go down, or you're in all these cryptos trading them and thinking you've got it figured out — so many of you have scheduled one-on-one calls with me on jerrybanfield.com and said, "Jerry, I want you to tell me how I can be a crypto trader and earn hundreds of dollars a day trading crypto."

And I'll ask you questions. I'll say, "Okay, well, what's your background?" "Well, I'm an electrician." "Okay, you're an electrician. Now why do you want to trade crypto?" "Well, I see your videos, I see these other people's videos, it looks pretty easy." It's not easy. It is not easy. If you get emotional, you should not trade crypto. If you're going to do well trading crypto, you generally would need to have some inside information, or be absolutely cold and calculating and not emotional. And it should ironically be no fun if you're going to do well, because when you get emotional is where you start making all these bad decisions trading crypto.

So many of you have gotten tricked into wanting to be crypto traders, because other people make huge profits off of crypto trading. Other people don't make hardly any profit off of you just buying and holding the Internet Computer Protocol. So to me the whole system is rigged to steal from you. It's rigged to steal time from you, and it does it by feeding you excitement.

Go find your excitement somewhere better

So if you're asking, "Okay, well, where do I get the excitement in my life?" — try and have some fun in another area of your life. To me, that craving for excitement is just an indication. I used to be right there with you. I was buying these coins, I was marketing them, I was getting all excited. And I found better things to do with my life than sit in front of a screen checking price charts. I realized I couldn't take a whole day off my life to do that anymore. My life has changed, and I have a lot more I want to do now than I used to. Buying and holding has freed up that time, and the boring approach is exactly what makes my ideal ICP accumulation strategy so simple.

Go get some fun somewhere real. Play sports, play games, create art. That's what I've been having a lot of fun with lately, because crypto often is miserably boring to me now. I can only do so many crypto videos before I get burnt out. The main way I don't get burnt out is I take the suggestions you all ask me for. But where do I have fun? Where have I been having fun? I've been doing these freestyles on my original Jerry Banfield YouTube channel. I just make myself laugh doing these freestyles. I say the craziest stuff and it's funny, and that's play.

Play is where the joy is

I've got an entire video on my reviews channel about being healthy and what has worked for me. It's called the Top 33 Health Books. One of the key takeaways from those health books is that if you want a life full of joy and vitality, the first place you usually lose that is when you stop playing. Think of who tends to be the ultra-healthiest kids: they play a lot. They have fun. They screw around. They hardly ever take life seriously. And they also tend to have very few health problems.

What do the people do who have the most health problems? The people with the most health problems tend to take life super seriously and constantly focus on their own personal problems all the time. And crypto, the way most people do it, is very much a negative-addiction focus on your financial insecurity. It sets you up for that negative experience.

So if you can find some areas to play in your life, to have fun, like I'm doing with my music — this is fun. It's a total loss financially, but I have fun. I laugh. I play with my kids and I have fun with them. I play video games as well, but I'm trying to figure out how I can play video games without it being toxic and addicting. I did a video about how I've quit Marvel Snap four times now, but the game was also fun. So if you're bored in crypto, congratulations.

If you ever get bored in crypto, remember this

If you ever get bored in crypto, remember this: it means you're doing it right. And it means there are other areas in life you can introduce, have fun with, and explore.

One reason you all do too much crypto is that it's a distraction. Some of you are hesitant to stop, hesitant to let go of your current addiction. I can say the same about Marvel Snap. When I got sucked into constantly playing Marvel Snap, the logic in my head was, "Well, if I keep playing Marvel Snap, I don't have to face any other problems I might have." It's like when I got sober. I quit drinking, and all my problems seemed to stem from drinking. But then I quit drinking, and — wow — there were all these other problems that the drinking had been obscuring.

So to me, if you want to be wealthy, investing in crypto is simple. ICP is what I'm doing with my own money. It's where all my research leads. It's simple, it's easy, and I don't watch all these people putting out all this garbage, confusing, "trade crypto" information. Honestly, my biggest struggle in crypto this year has been that it gets so boring. I can't stand to make 50,000 videos talking about how ICP is the best. I mean, in my opinion it is — and there you go. What else needs to be said?

So I've been introducing more play and more fun into my life as a creator. I'm going to do a maximum of one crypto video a day on this channel. And honestly this channel has become an exercise in "how do I say the same thing differently every single day?" Some of you say, "Your videos are so boring, you say the same thing every day." That's because it's easy and it's obvious. I've figured out 50 ways to say the same thing, because there's really only one message that needs to be said. If you want to go deeper on that one message, that's exactly what I keep walking through video by video in my ICP Crypto playlist.

ICP Holding: Why Being Bored in Crypto Means You're Doing It Right

On this page

ICP Is the Only Crypto That Lets Me Relax

Crypto Doesn't Have to Be Stressful

What I Used to Do: Buying Coins I Didn't Understand

Crypto Addiction Is Real

A July 4th Party and a Dating-Life Realization

Dollar-Cost Averaging Toward 10,000 ICP

Awareness Comes First

Price Versus Fundamentals

From Depressed to Two July 4th Parties

Buy Signals and Knowing When You Have Enough

Beware of Simple Explanations

Genius Is Synthesizing Complexity into One Call to Action

Why Is the Price Down, and What Could Send It Up?

Take Off the Old Crypto Narratives

The Main Thing Is to Not Screw This Up

My Plan: Load the Bags, Then Compound

Cloud Engines and Why Other Cryptos Make You Anxious

Where AWS Falls Short

Do Your Own Research — AI Makes It Easy

What the AI Said About ICP

DFINITY's Quiet Strength: The NDA Theory

A Ticking Price Explosion

From Famine to Feast

Why I Want More Time to Accumulate

This Is Not Speculation — I Use the Technology Every Day

The Visceral Difference of ICP

Wrapping Up: All In, Leading by Example

My Friend Almost Sold 10,000 ICP… Then We Talked

My Friend Came Over to Sell His Stack

Why Unrealized Gains Change Everything

Why I Passed on Buying His ICP

The Real Estate Trade That Would Haunt Him

The Dating Tangent I Couldn't Resist

Don't Sell at the Worst Possible Time

ICP Has First-Mover Advantage Like Bitcoin

The Dash Mistake I Still Regret

ICP Holding: Why Being Bored in Crypto Means You're Doing It Right

On this page

ICP Is the Only Crypto That Lets Me Relax

Crypto Doesn't Have to Be Stressful

What I Used to Do: Buying Coins I Didn't Understand

Crypto Addiction Is Real

A July 4th Party and a Dating-Life Realization

Dollar-Cost Averaging Toward 10,000 ICP

Awareness Comes First

Price Versus Fundamentals

From Depressed to Two July 4th Parties

Buy Signals and Knowing When You Have Enough

Beware of Simple Explanations

Genius Is Synthesizing Complexity into One Call to Action

Why Is the Price Down, and What Could Send It Up?

Take Off the Old Crypto Narratives

The Main Thing Is to Not Screw This Up

My Plan: Load the Bags, Then Compound

Cloud Engines and Why Other Cryptos Make You Anxious

Where AWS Falls Short

Do Your Own Research — AI Makes It Easy

What the AI Said About ICP

DFINITY's Quiet Strength: The NDA Theory

A Ticking Price Explosion

From Famine to Feast

Why I Want More Time to Accumulate

This Is Not Speculation — I Use the Technology Every Day

The Visceral Difference of ICP

Wrapping Up: All In, Leading by Example

My Friend Almost Sold 10,000 ICP… Then We Talked

My Friend Came Over to Sell His Stack

Why Unrealized Gains Change Everything

Why I Passed on Buying His ICP

The Real Estate Trade That Would Haunt Him

The Dating Tangent I Couldn't Resist

Don't Sell at the Worst Possible Time

ICP Has First-Mover Advantage Like Bitcoin

The Dash Mistake I Still Regret

Being Bored in Crypto Is a Sign of Success

If you're bored, you're not gambling

Excitement is the addiction

Why projects want crypto to feel complicated