I've been in Internet Computer Protocol since 2023, and I think you'll love seeing the evolution of my portfolio and my thinking over time, because my hope is that you can avoid making the same mistakes I have. I want to be transparent about my history here, show you exactly where I'm at today, and walk through how I got here. I've kept different screenshots of my portfolios over the years, and looking back at them tells the whole story.
Where I started in August 2023
When I first had Internet Computer Protocol, or ICP, I didn't really understand what a big deal it was. I was mostly heavy into Bitcoin and Ethereum, and ICP was only my third-place position. Behind that I was holding DeSo, or Decentralized Social, along with Solana, and yes, Avalanche (AVAX), and even a meme coin named BTC2.0, which I haven't checked on in quite a while. I'm genuinely curious to look that one up and see what happened to it. I imagine it probably went to zero.
Right after that August 2023 snapshot, in September and October of 2023, I went all in on ICP, because I realized Internet Computer Protocol is fundamentally and completely different from the rest of crypto. The way I see it, Bitcoin was the first big innovation, Ethereum was the second big innovation, and ICP is the third big innovation. Not Solana, not Avalanche, not Hyperliquid, not XRP, none of these other ones. Internet Computer Protocol is the first platform where you can put every single thing fully on chain. I laid out that whole decision at the time in I'm ALL IN on Internet Computer Protocol ICP, and the thesis hasn't changed.
What I've built since then is only possible to build on Internet Computer Protocol. I've used Claude, connected it to ICP CLI, which is the Internet Computer Protocol command line, and now this entire website runs on ICP, which is just incredible to me. You could literally buy my gold satin shirt with ICP if you felt like it. You can pay with a credit card or with ICP. I've got courses on the site. I've built a game with AI directly on my website. The big thing that's changed with ICP since I got into it is that AI now lets you build easily on ICP. When I got into this in 2023, it was difficult to actually build anything on ICP. So the value proposition has gotten dramatically better for ICP since I first discovered it, because it's now very easy to actually use the blockchain and get the value out of it.
My question is this: has the value proposition for Bitcoin or Ethereum gotten any better since 2023? I would say incrementally better for Ethereum, and not any better at all for Bitcoin.
How going all in on ICP wrecked me in the short term
And yet I have to be honest: I've gotten wrecked by being in ICP. When I went all in on ICP in October 2023, or maybe the end of September and the beginning of October, the Bitcoin price chart tells the story. In the short term, I've just been annihilated by the strategy I chose. If you look at 2023 and go to October, right about when I went all in on ICP, it was roughly 10,000 ICP per Bitcoin, and Bitcoin was around $30,000 or so when I made the move. I remember when ICP pumped, the ratio went down to something like 4,000, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 ICP per Bitcoin, and I thought, great, it's going in the right direction. But since then I've felt really dumb lots of times, because Bitcoin has just blown up against ICP.
In terms of my short-term portfolio value, if I had stuck with my October or August 2023 portfolio and simply held my Bitcoin and ETH, I would actually have come out way ahead. Solana had quite a run since then too. I used to do a lot of videos hyping up Solana, and I used to get a lot of views on videos hyping up Solana, hyping up Bitcoin, hyping up Ethereum. I gave that up to go all in on ICP. I had bought back into Solana when it crashed down under $9 or $10. I was buying Solana toward the bottom, picking up some under $9 after the FTX collapse and everything that came with it. When I went all in on ICP, Solana was around $20, and a lot of people made fun of me, because I would have gotten a 5x in Solana to today, and even something like a 10x if I had held my Solana instead of ICP. I told the full story of that trade in I Sold ALL My Solana for Internet Computer Protocol.
But here's the thing. We aren't finished in crypto. I still have the same basic thesis I had when I went all in on ICP three years ago: ICP is the absolute best technology in the world for crypto, and it is the only true Web3 platform we've got. There still has been nothing else that came out to challenge that, and I went deep on why in Why I'm So Bullish on ICP: The Best Technology in Crypto and Real Web3. So even though in the short term I've been destroyed in terms of the money I would have if I had held that 2023 portfolio exactly as it was, I'm not changing course.
The one sale I'm glad I made: DeSo
I think the one exception in that old portfolio is DeSo, because Avalanche hasn't done that great either, and that BTC2.0 meme coin was garbage. The one holding I did unload where selling was clearly a very good idea was DeSo. DeSo was really hyped up as the future of decentralized social media. But when I realized the Internet Computer had the infrastructure to actually build something like DeSo, and that DeSo was basically fronting, that it didn't really have it for real, I got out. I had launched my own coin on DeSo, and then it rugged, and people weren't happy about that. Technically I didn't have a coin of my own, because you could only buy into it on DeSo, but I pulled out of my DeSo coin and people were pissed off. My position was, look, once you understand what ICP is, you don't need DeSo anymore.
DeSo has been the one area where I came out clearly ahead. It's a good thing I sold all of it around September at roughly $8, because DeSo has just gotten destroyed since then and is down under $1.45. So what's interesting is that even if I had kept my original portfolio intact, my DeSo would have gotten wrecked, and that would have canceled out a lot of my gains in Solana. I still would have had more gains in Solana overall, but losing 80 percent of the value in my DeSo would have erased some of those Solana gains.
April 2025: heavy in the ICP ecosystem
My real question today is where we go forward from here, and where I'm at now with what I've learned. In April 2025, I was very heavy into the ICP ecosystem. I had 3,400 ICP, and I still have that same amount of ICP locked up today. The big difference is that back then I was also into the rest of the ICP ecosystem. I had a bunch of OpenChat, and it's sad what has happened to OpenChat and the rest of the ICP ecosystem. The ICP ecosystem has gotten absolutely destroyed as a lot of these projects have not been able to sustain themselves. If you look at OpenChat today, it's down to three cents, and I think it was around ten times that much back when I was holding it.
I did make a good move there: I unloaded my OpenChat. I saw that almost nobody was delivering real value in the ICP ecosystem. I was marketing these projects, and they were basically just rugging almost everybody and delivering no value. I was criticizing many of the projects for not doing very effective marketing and for just dumping tokens all over their holders. And unfortunately, OpenChat, which I said then and still think was one of the absolute best coins in the whole ecosystem, has just gotten destroyed too. I sold most of my OpenChat around those higher prices, and I'm sad to see where it has gone today. I also dumped my DecideAI. I did some marketing for these projects and got people into them, and DecideAI has just gotten annihilated since then as well. My own meme coin now barely has a lower market cap than DecideAI does.
Going back and forth on meme coins
I also was in and out of the JBBJ meme coin. I went back and forth on whether I like meme coins, whether they're wrong. It's interesting, because back in the day I'd get into a meme coin, I'd shill a meme coin, I'd make money off a meme coin, I'd community farm a meme coin. Then I had this meme coin purity phase where I didn't want to be in any of it, which I wrote about in I Tried Trading Meme Coins and It Was Horrible, Even on ICP. I think some people say I'm inconsistent. My answer is that all of us have the right to change our minds, and all of these things are brand new. It's like outfits. You try one on. Maybe I like it, maybe I don't. Then I'll try this other outfit on. And I've accepted the reality that people are trading meme coins. That's just the reality, whether you like it or not. There are all kinds of meme coins out there.
My portfolio today: locked ICP that keeps compounding
So here's where I've landed with my portfolio today. I've got the same locked ICP, and one of the best things I ever did was take that ICP and just lock it up. I've not touched it. I locked the ICP and I've been constantly compounding my locked ICP, so the neuron has actually grown a lot. All of the maturity in it has accumulated since I started it. I've got another 20 percent on top of what I originally had, plus I sold some maturity along the way too. At this rate I'm going to continue getting hundreds of ICP in maturity a year. While the ICP price is low, and to me anything under $10 is definitely low, I want to just keep stacking into my maturity so that I keep increasing my neuron as much as possible. I weighed how much is enough in Is 7,000 ICP Enough? Deciding When to Stop Stacking, and the compounding is what keeps me going.
At the same time, I had as high as 10,000 ICP in my portfolio at one point, and I sold a bunch of that because I put some money back in the bank. Right now I've been running at a loss in my business, and I've been borrowing money. So it doesn't make sense to have so much in ICP and then get caught up in short-term ICP price action, hoping to unload ICP at the right moment. That is not a good way to approach things, in my experience. So today I've got most of my ICP locked, with a few hundred liquid ICP set aside in case I need to host my website, or just as play money. I sold something like $9,000 worth of my ICP when it pumped up to almost $3, because I had too much ICP, and I'm glad I did, because that money is still sitting in the bank and it's going to help me pay the rent for the rest of the year.
Launching my meme coin and getting hacked
Meanwhile, I launched a meme coin, and I got hacked. The hackers immediately sold the meme coin. They didn't see the long-term vision in it. So I got hacked, and in a strange way it was lucky they hacked it when they did and didn't wait, because it was probably on its way to a million-dollar market cap. We had a really strong start for this meme coin. And thank you to the MaxFi team, because the MaxFi team actually came in and bought some of the meme coin when it was crashing to help get it back up.
The MaxFi team also sent me some of the tokens, and right now the JERRY meme coin on Robinhood is sitting at a low point. At this point I've lost six, seven, at least $7,000 in this meme coin, which is about 2,000 ICP worth. I shared how I funded that position in I Sold 1,000 ICP for JERRY on Robinhood. The nice thing with this meme coin, though, is that I have the second biggest wallet right now, and the liquidity pool is the top wallet. I've still got about $2,400 in it. I'm planning on holding this at a minimum until the market cap climbs into the millions of dollars. There's no way I would sell any of this until it at least hits into the millions, and since I'm providing liquidity, I'd be much better off continuing to provide liquidity than selling it anyway.
Holding JBBJ again
I also have the JBBJ meme coin. I went back and forth on this one a lot as well. This was the first meme coin I launched, and my thinking now is that people are going to trade meme coins anyway, it's already out there, so I might as well support it. I have the fifth largest wallet. This is the largest amount of JBBJ I've held since I originally launched it, bought about 90 percent of it, and then dumped it before it even bonded. Then the community bought basically all of it. Today I have 52 million JBBJ, which is 5 percent of the supply, worth about $2,700.
The evolution: Bitcoin and ETH, then ICP altcoins, now ICP and my own coins
It's interesting to look at the evolution of my portfolio. First I had all this money in Bitcoin and ETH, with ICP at about 20 percent. Then I had everything in ICP, but with a bunch of that ICP spread across ecosystem altcoins, and most of those altcoins have absolutely tanked. Now I have ICP and my own meme coins. And honestly, I'm very happy with this portfolio. ICP is the biggest part of my portfolio currently, and ICP is not likely to go anywhere. To me it's very low risk with very high potential reward, just not short-term reward. Then I've got the rest of my money, which at this point is about $5,000 in meme coins. But these are my meme coins. JBBJ is the first one, on ICP, and JERRY is the newest one, on Robinhood. Because they're mine, I can simply mention my meme coins in all the crypto videos I do, and I hold five percent of the total supply in each of them. So if the price goes up, I stand to gain a huge amount in my net worth.
What's interesting is that someday my meme coins might actually be worth a lot more than my ICP. And yes, I do reserve the right, if my meme coins go up something like 20x, to maybe take a tiny amount of profit and put some of it back into ICP. I wouldn't take out more than 10 percent, and I would never take an amount out of my meme coins that would crash the price, because with a meme coin the price is so important. I went back and forth on this, and where I've landed is: look, I'm staying in these meme coins, I'm going to ride these things, and I'm definitely going to see how long their life is.
What I've learned: fewer assets, highest conviction
So what have I learned looking back at my crypto portfolio? Ideally, I want to be in fewer assets that I have the absolute highest conviction about. First off, that's ICP. I have the highest conviction about ICP, and I've come to believe, as I argued in Every Crypto Except ICP Is a Meme Coin, Even Bitcoin, that it's the only coin that isn't ultimately a bet on sentiment. Second, it's my own meme coins. I launched these, and I can depend on myself to do the marketing. This feels like the best strategy, because I've got my money in something that to a large degree doesn't even depend on me outside of the videos I do about it, which is ICP. And now roughly half my money is in coins I directly launched, where the only thing behind them is the Jerry Banfield brand at this point.
That feels better than being in a bunch of projects where I own a tiny, tiny part of the supply, and where a bunch of my followers buy into projects with big SNS market caps that then dump on them. I drove so much value to so many coins and I got almost nothing out of it, something I wrestled with in I Can't Stop Marketing ICP (Even If I Want To). Now, if I drive even a tiny amount of value to a $50,000 market cap coin like JBBJ on ICP, or even a tiny amount of buying power to JERRY, it matters. Literally $1,000 in buying power on JERRY moves the market cap up by something like $5,000. So even tiny amounts of money coming into these meme coins end up being huge. This is a nice position to be in, where I feel like I'm not just getting ripped off shilling other people's projects all the time, and at the same time I'm not all in on meme coins either.
Earning on liquidity with MaxFi
I'm extremely grateful to the MaxFi team too, because my JERRY is sitting there in liquidity. Some of it is actually in a different wallet, so I have around $500 to $600 worth of JERRY sitting in a liquidity wallet, and I might put some more in there at some point. If I buy more, I'll put it into liquidity so I make APR on it as well. That way, when people trade JERRY, even if the price stays the same, I get paid for providing liquidity too. And there are tons of options: you can even provide liquidity on Coinbase's Base layer two through MaxFi and actually earn an APR. I'm going to test that out on MaxFi soon. I plan to move some of the liquid ICP I have over to MaxFi and see how much of an APR I can make on it instead of having it parked in the NNS.
Track your own portfolio over time
I encourage you to take screenshots and keep track of your crypto portfolio over time like this, so you can learn from it. To me, it was a huge waste having my money in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Those are so big that my voice doesn't matter there. The tech is only getting incrementally better on Ethereum, and it's not getting better on Bitcoin at all. DeSo just rugged. Solana is a project I don't believe in or use. Avalanche, same thing. BTC2.0 was a meme coin I don't control. So even though that 2023 portfolio would have worked better so far, it's very doubtful to me that the 2023 portfolio makes it into 2030 in better shape than my portfolio today. If you want to follow how this plays out, I keep every update in my ICP Crypto playlist.
And I hope OpenChat makes a comeback. I love the team there, and they're working on the messenger app for Pakistan. I hope that makes a comeback, and I hope some of these other ICP projects succeed too.