Are you feeling bored right now in crypto? Like, why is the ICP price so flat? Why is nothing happening? Just be bored and lean into that feeling, and you're going to level up in ways you've never imagined before. I've been in crypto 10 years now, and the one constant I can tell you is that, the vast majority of the time, it's boring. That's normal.
Some of you in my OpenChat, and on the calls you've scheduled on jerrybanfield.com, have said, well, Jerry, ICP is so boring. Crypto is so boring. Good — because the way I see it, a lot of smart investing is finding something when it's boring, when nobody's paying attention to it, and then dollar-cost-averaging in steadily over time. Then when the excitement comes, you're already in position. That's where I am with my ICP and with my OpenChat. I'm using this stuff every day.
We had some excitement a few times in the last year. Dominic released the blockchain-on-AI demo. We had excitement when GoldDAO launched, and ICP pumped from $3 in a few months up to $18 — and it's been pretty dull since then. What you can discover, leaning into the boredom, is new opportunities to learn and grow.
Why I used to fight being bored
What I've noticed is that, when I've been bored in my life, I've tried to fight being bored a lot. I've been afraid of being bored, so I would even proactively do stuff to escape it. I used to drink a lot of alcohol because I hated being bored. Instead of just facing my boredom — sitting there, feeling it, seeing what I could learn from it, and then trying to help somebody else or trying to learn something new — I'd just drink so I could keep enduring the same boring circumstances.
In crypto, lots of times when you're bored, you'll try to make things interesting, and that's often where you end up losing money or making bad decisions. Some of you have tried to make crypto interesting with things like meme coins. You all have blown up this meme coin, the JBBJ that I launched, quite a bit recently. The liquidity has been amazing for it, and this is something you all are doing because there's, like, nothing better to do, really. That's why people are so attracted to meme coins: well, let's make this meme coin, let's pump it up, and now it's got a market cap. But really, to me, I'm never going to put serious energy into meme coins. These are a distraction.
What I do when I'm bored instead
What you can do when you're bored is often advance in other areas. If I'm bored in crypto, then I've been advancing in other areas. I took a tennis coaching lesson today, and tennis is one of the more interesting areas of my life right now. I'm also making music, and I've just started this new diaries autobiography playlist on my original channel. If you search for the Jerry Banfield Diaries podcast, it's on my original Jerry Banfield channel, which is linked on jerrybanfield.com.
I've been cranking these out lately, and I'm super excited about them, because I look back and think: what do I wish I'd created over the last 40 years? I wish I just had a three-to-five-minute video talking about my life each day. So I'm doing these every day now, and I think they're very binge-watchable. I do present days, and then I dive back as far as a year before I was born, and I revisit some of the more interesting days, like the last time I had a hangover.
So when you're bored in crypto, you might try to fight it by creating meme coins and looking for excitement — or, hopefully not, with things like substance abuse, or desperately searching for somebody who has anything interesting to say. Often when you're bored and trying to fight it, you'll get caught up in pointless drama too. When I've been bored in my life, I've created drama. I've made trouble where there wasn't any. Today, I'm glad I can just remain consistent in crypto and ask: how can I help you each day? One thing you can do if you're bored is find a way to help somebody else. Last week, I fixed up my fence and then I fixed up a family member's fence, and that was fun, because I hadn't done anything with fences before. I was learning something new, and I listened to some audiobooks and some stand-up comedy while I did it.
I've struggled a lot with being bored with my own crypto videos. That's why a couple of months ago — speaking of creating drama where there wasn't any — I quit doing crypto videos. I did a diary entry instead. If you missed that, I took the original video and made it private, but the Dear Diary video covers it in a quick two minutes. I quit doing this stuff online, doing these crypto videos every day and saying the same thing over and over again, because I was so bored. During that time, I took more time to do other things. I started taking my tennis game more seriously, started going and playing more tennis, and that was so much fun.
Being bored is often a sign of success
Sometimes boredom will even manifest things on a collective basis, like natural disasters. I very much believe things like the hurricanes were intentionally manifested. People in my area had a whole bunch of different desires, and those hurricanes in St. Pete, Florida, met those desires. Some people wanted to start over. Some people wanted new furniture. Some people wanted more money. Some people were just bored and wanted something interesting. And I found the hurricanes made life very interesting. There's a part of me, as we go back to normal here, that's kind of sad — like, well, now things are just back to boring again. That's my own way of looking at it, of course.
When you don't try to fight the boredom but instead lean into it, you start to see that being bored is often a sign of success. If you are bored in crypto, that might mean you've done a really good job with your research. I did a video yesterday talking about OpenChat, and I've done hundreds at this point talking about ICP. Once you find ICP, crypto really does get boring. It's like, okay, I found ICP, I'm in position, all I need to do is wait.
Sometimes being bored is a sign you've done everything right. You've lined your life up perfectly. You're in the right house with the right person, you've got the right kids, you've got the right career. Sometimes being bored is a sign that everything you've wanted is already here, and it's been given to you. That's a reason to celebrate.
If you already have your ICP, you're done
If you're bored in crypto and you already have your ICP, and you've already got your OpenChat and some ICP coins, it's like — okay, Jerry, what else is there to do? Nothing. There's nothing else to do. You did the research. You got the stuff. You're in position. Congratulations. Now, in terms of crypto itself, all you need to do is wait. And a big leveling up can happen when you realize: oh, being bored means now I can grow in a different area. Being bored in crypto is a sign that maybe there are some other areas of your life you could grow in.
On some of the calls you all have scheduled with me, I've said: you're doing great with your crypto. You're done. Congratulations. You don't need to do anything else. You got your ICP locked up. You got a couple of ICP coins. You're good. You're done. This is exactly what I get into when someone asks me whether their ICP stack is finally enough and when it's okay to stop stacking. And you all have asked me: well, Jerry, I've been spending an hour or two a day doing crypto — what do you mean I'm done? What does that mean? What am I going to do with that time? I am excited for you to find out.
This is a time to deal with other things you've been avoiding, like your weight, your alcoholism or drug addiction, your health — or to put some more play and some more fun into your life: to be outside, to go hiking, to play tennis, to make some new friends, to date. If you're bored in crypto, this is a time to level up the rest of your life.
Use the boredom to level up the rest of your life
I've noticed that a lot of you who are putting these hours into crypto, and who already have it handled, keep putting the hours in anyway — because if you pulled those hours out, you'd be kind of scared of having that space in your life, scared of getting into the unknown. Where you level up is going into the unknown consciously. When I took a month off of doing videos, I went into the unknown. I started imagining all these things, like, what if I become a hypnotherapist? I had thoughts I'd never had before. That helped me expand my mind and come back to my crypto videos and stick hard to the fundamentals.
For me, the fundamentals are being there in my OpenChat community. When you all are talking, I go into my OpenChat community and I listen to what you all are saying. I actually started this meme coin because you all were talking about meme coins, and I essentially had to create one defensively — somebody had already created one, so I figured I might as well make an official one. And that lets me stick to the fundamentals: hey, I'm in my OpenChat every day, I do my one-on-one calls, and I don't need to do anything else with crypto. I'm done with crypto. If using ICP and OpenChat this way is new to you, this is the kind of thing I walk people through hands-on, like when I gave away $1,000 of Bitcoin in 30 seconds on OpenChat. If you ever want help with any of it, you can join me and the rest of the Jerry Banfield Family and ask me directly.
Boredom hits content creators too
Where I've gotten bored with crypto in the past, I've then started trying harder, and that usually backfires. One thing you have to realize as a content creator is that sometimes your audience is bored too. I was talking to some of the other ICP YouTubers and they're like, yeah, views are down on my channel, viewers just aren't that interested, viewers aren't clicking videos as much. If you look at some of my videos from the past, when people were more hyped up and excited about ICP — especially around the beginning of the year — the views were way higher, just because people were more excited.
I got a bit bored with crypto, so I started covering all these other cryptos. I got views on those videos, and some of them were helpful, but it was also a big distraction. I made some videos that really annoyed me, and it brought about drama, when as a content creator sometimes all you need to do is just stay where you're at. So I'm going to just keep creating these ICP videos. When people are really excited about ICP — there was a bunch of excitement around December — you can see some of those videos got like 40,000 views instead of a thousand. And it's literally just because people were excited. You can watch how I think about all of this across my ICP Crypto playlist.
In the past, I thought: well, if I'm not excited and everybody else isn't excited, I must not be in the right place. But no — sometimes people are just off doing other stuff, and crypto right now is kind of boring. While things are boring, though, this is the time, at least as a content creator, to lay a super strong foundation and be ready for when people are all excited again. Because when people are excited, that's when you get the price-pump action, that's when a whole bunch of new people come in. But if you weren't prepared for that, you're going to miss out on it. When that happened in December, I was prepared. I was ready. I made tons of money on calls, all kinds of people came into my OpenChat, and some of you are still with me from then.
Laying a strong foundation while it's quiet
As a content creator, I've struggled when things have been boring, and now I realize this is my time to be consistent. So sure, maybe keep watching my videos, or somebody else's — like Zero2Hero, Coin Nation HQ, Bobby O, Cityscape, Blockchain Pill. Maybe watch some of our videos occasionally to keep up with it. Hang out in OpenChat and talk with us. Maybe learn something new.
But what I'm really doing as a content creator right now is getting excited about my diaries and my music. When I'm consumed with crypto, when crypto has been exciting, it's been hard for me to pay attention to anything else — and that's the downside. So I also want to be ready with this other kind of content. I want my diaries ready so that when the crypto excitement hits and I get all these new viewers, and people are desperate to find out every detail about me, I can say: look, go listen to these diaries, this is where you can really get to know me. And then, once that's got hundreds and hundreds of videos and you can binge-watch six or ten hours of them all at once, then I'm in position.
Crypto is a means to an end
So this is a great opportunity. If you're bored in crypto, it's a great time to level up the rest of your life, and then you can really reap the rewards from your crypto investing. Because if you're sick, and if you're lonely, and if you're depressed, it doesn't really matter if you make money in crypto or not. That's the bad news here: making money in crypto won't change anything else in your life. What it can do, though, is support the joy you already have in the rest of your life.
I love doing one crypto video a day, and then I can go play tennis. I can go get a massage today. I can put the kids to bed so my wife can go out, do her workout classes, and hang out with her friends. I can be around when my wife wants to take a trip to New York, like she's doing this weekend. I can go play basketball, go do yoga. I love that if I just do one crypto video a day, it supports the entire rest of my lifestyle. That seems like a really nice deal to me. So what if it's boring sometimes? So what if I struggle to come up with a topic that's interesting? So what if fewer people watch — as long as I'm getting enough to support the whole rest of my life?
So I'd say, if you're bored in crypto, start thinking about how crypto can support the rest of your life, instead of expecting it to leave you feeling fulfilled. Crypto is not something that should be leaving you fulfilled. In most cases, crypto is a means to an end. You want passive income. You want more money. You want to be out of debt. You want some location or job freedom. Crypto as a means to an end is not the end itself. If you're putting hours and hours a day into crypto and that's your excitement, I think there are some opportunities for you to enhance the quality of your life. Obviously, you can talk to me about that in OpenChat or on a call if you'd like to — that's an area I'm really good at, and some of the best one-on-one calls I've had started right there. Some of you found me through crypto, but then you started to ask, hey, how do I make the rest of my life better? If that's you, come find me inside the Jerry Banfield Family and let's talk.
Why my life is easier than ever
I haven't been sick myself in two years. Not one day. My body works perfectly. My body has never worked this well before. It feels like a child's body — it's very playful, it's full of energy, everything feels good. Injuries and little things heal up. My relationship with my wife has never been as good. Parenting is easier than ever. We just went through two of the worst hurricanes this area has ever seen, and I had fun with it. It wasn't a tragedy. I lost some things materially, but I'm going to make the money to rebuy that stuff. Life is easier than ever — and the only downside of that is that it can get boring very easily.
So, just be bored, and you'll level up.