My friends, you're about to hear my worst crypto rant. I actually hate most of crypto. And I hate it because so much of it is quick pump-and-dump schemes. It's you getting ripped off. It's you spending a bunch of time and energy and money just to lose money. It's you, or people like you, taking your life savings and throwing it into some dumb coin, and then losing all of it and getting ripped off. I love crypto, but I also really hate the majority of crypto. So much of crypto is people copying a blockchain and it turning into a billion-dollar market cap with no value to the world. I understand why so many people say crypto is all scams and just stay out of it.
Why We Still Need Crypto
But here's the thing: we do need crypto. Our existing financial system is busted. It's based on fractional reserve banking and lending. The dollars we have are debt-based. When you go to withdraw money from the bank, if even a small percentage of us all try to take money out at the same time, they don't have our money in the bank. They've lent it all out. And governments are scared of runs on banks. What is this, a hundred years ago? What happened to our financial system, where governments are putting systems in place to try to censor talk about finance, to stop runs on banks, and to set limits for how much money you can take out of the bank? It's your money. So we do need crypto.
But crypto has become this mess where you have something like Casper, which I'm going to call out specifically, because to me it's an example of exactly what's wrong with crypto. Casper is all marketing and all hype. It has a three-billion-dollar market cap. And all you can do with it is take it out of your wallet on an exchange, put it into another wallet, and sit there and speculate that maybe the price will go up. Casper has essentially copied the directed acyclic graph from the innovators who created the directed acyclic graph, and then the proof-of-work concept that was created with Bitcoin, and just stuck the two of those together. Then all this marketing and hype came out, and Casper offers no value to the world.
Why? Because there's a bunch of stuff that already is proof of work and already sends transactions fast. If you want proof of work, Bitcoin does proof of work. If you want scalability, there are tons of things with just as fast, or faster, transactions than Casper. And proof of work is not even decentralized, because most people can't afford to do it. They can't afford to buy mining equipment and don't have the technical expertise to mine. Therefore, a very small group of people is even capable of mining. And then the rich just get richer with proof-of-work mining. The people who mine the most can afford to buy new machines and stay on top of it.
The Best Technology I See in Crypto
And then you've got things like Internet Computer. This is the best technology I see anywhere in crypto. It has a founding team with ten times as many members, with qualifications that blow something like Casper away. Yet the market cap is lower. And the majority of people, all they do is look at a price chart and say, "Well, this sucks." They don't even look at anything else. Then they look at a price chart like Casper's and say, "Wow, look, it's at all-time highs, it must be great." No, it sucks.
I'll say clearly that this is educational material, and it's up to you to come to your own conclusions. My analysis is that Casper is going straight to zero. Well, maybe not straight there, but it's all hype and speculation. The technology is not providing real value to the world. It has just copied other technologies and thrown them together. From what people said on my stream, the founder's teaching at Harvard and doesn't even have time to really go promote Casper. There are five developers on it. And yet, if you ask most people in crypto, they would think Casper is a better investment than Internet Computer. And it's like, oh my God. When this dumps, just like almost everything else in crypto that has had at least a cycle out, it dumps and goes to zero.
I've talked to so many of you who put your life savings into something that, if I'd looked at it for five minutes, I could have told you was a junk coin. Pure hype and speculation. It will never go anywhere. And yet many of you have lost thousands and thousands in these garbage coins. Even as long as I've been in crypto, I've lost thousands and thousands in these garbage coins myself. I bought into the Crypto.com hype and lost three thousand dollars in that last year. What I've learned is that you need to do better research. You need to stop looking at price charts and calling that research. You need to look at the team. You need to look at what the technology can actually do.
Building a World Full of Wealthy People
I want to build a world full of wealthy people. And you're not going to build a world full of wealthy people with a bunch of pump-and-dump hype cryptos. People have such a bad idea of crypto that they think all it is is pump and dumps. We need crypto to give us a better financial system. And a better financial system should be one of equal opportunity, which is why, in my view, proof of stake is far superior to proof of work, if you can actually stake it. Unlike Ethereum, where you have to have 32 Ethereum. Who has 32 Ethereum? Most people in the world don't. On Internet Computer, you can stake with as little as one ICP, which means someone anywhere in the world could manage to get hold of one ICP, stake it, and start participating in decentralizing the network, voting on it, and getting a return for themselves. Internet Computer is the best technology I see on the market in terms of helping us build a world that's more financially accessible and transparent, and that can be truly decentralized. The technology is like Amazon Web Services, except it's built on a crypto. It's so far superior to everything else.
Some of you are like, "Oh, you're just pissed off because you didn't buy Casper." I saw Casper at ten times less than it is today. I didn't buy it, because I did my research and thought, this is just another pump-and-dump coin. That's all it is. Somebody with money dollar-cost-averaged into it when it was low, then decided they wanted to pump and dump it, and probably used bots to manipulate content on platforms like YouTube and X to get people into it and hyped up. Then, when the bots push the manipulated content, you get creators who just make content on it over and over again who don't even understand it, who buy into it themselves and are pumping their own bags, who don't even know what else is on the market, who are just saying whatever they want to say to try to get views. Almost everybody is purely concerned with getting money.
Why I Do This
Now some of you will say, "Well, you're not?" I have enough. I have enough money. I've already got everything I want. My wife has a great job. I don't even need to make money. I do this because I want to build a world full of wealthy people. I do this because I'm tired of you getting ripped off. My job here is to help. This is the way I can see to help the most, because I've played games, I've done all kinds of content online, I make music. Most of you are vulnerable in your pocketbook. But if you have a place to live you're happy with, a car you're happy to drive, enough food for your family, as I do, it's hard to mess with me, because I have enough. Because I have abundance, it's hard to scare me. It's hard to make me do things I don't want to do, because I have enough.
But when you all get tricked into putting your money in these junk coins, you lose your life savings and you get stuck in fear. You get scared, and your mind shrinks. My mind is massive and huge, and that's because I don't live in fear all day. Because I have enough. When you get stuck in this financial insecurity and you get afraid, you'll trade your time and money carelessly at jobs you hate. You'll throw away your health just to pay the bills. You'll dream of some pump-and-dump scheme saving you from your own self-created mess. And then you drive stupid. I have to deal with you driving crazy because you're afraid of losing a job you don't even like, that you're late for because you're trying to do too much.
When you all are getting hit in the pocketbook, you're becoming vulnerable, and crypto has ripped off most of the people who've participated in it. Which is sad, because the existing financial system rips off almost everybody who participates in it too. Almost everybody in the existing financial system is getting ripped off by inflation, and there are very few people who actually benefit a lot from that. Those few often pile into hard assets, constantly building wealth, then leverage that for more debt. I'm tired of you all working hard for your money and then blowing it on crappy investments.
I've seen so many comments from people, and the biggest thing that kills people in crypto is confirmation bias. That means you get tricked into buying some horrible crypto investment, you buy it, and now you become a shiller of it. You've caught a mind virus, and now you're trying to pass it on to other people. That's what most of crypto has become: this mind virus where everybody's shilling their own crypto. And the fact of the matter is that so many people are doing it purely for their own money, not for you. You've got to understand something about this internet and how much money can move on it. The video you saw was originally promoted by bots and originally created by a creator who only cares about making themselves money, who gives no care about you or your livelihood.
I care about you and your livelihood, because your livelihood affects me. When you've got plenty of money like I do and everything's great in your life, I can afford to drive slow. I'm not out here driving crazy, because I'm not in a hurry. Nothing I do in my life is that time-sensitive. I have no job to go to and lose. I leave early because my schedule has plenty of open time in it. I'm not stressed out.
You are being ripped off and manipulated, because there are all these ways you get tricked out of your money and pushed into putting it into stupid things. And from there, your whole life goes downhill. You get stressed out, and then you make more bad decisions. You decide to date someone out of that same fear. You have to get out of this fear mindset. You have to get out of this fear mindset where, because you are afraid, you make all these other decisions that keep you afraid. I am not afraid to lose all my crypto. I would be more afraid to not follow and trust my own research.
Do your own research
The easiest way through this is the one thing I keep begging for: I am tired of people not doing their own research. And I know you are not doing your own research, because you are stuck in confirmation bias. You bought something, you got tricked into buying something by somebody who was purely using you as a means to an end, and then you do not want to be wrong. Many of you are way too concerned about being right. I am very open about being wrong. Where I have been wrong in crypto has been not considering how what I say impacts you, and just wanting to say anything to get you to like me.
Many of you get pissed off watching my videos, because I am one of the few people who comes out here and tells you things you do not want to hear. I point out why the coin you are holding onto is nothing more than the equivalent of copying somebody else's paper in school, turning it in, and expecting to get an A. Then you get an F on the paper because you copied somebody else's work, and you wonder, well, what went wrong? What went wrong is that most of these cryptos do not actually make a meaningful innovation to the space. Copying a directed acyclic graph and copying a proof of work model, sticking those together and putting that out, is not a meaningful contribution to the space. It is another pump and dump.
What a meaningful contribution actually looks like
Now, putting together something like Internet Computer is a meaningful contribution to the space. Decentralized identity. A system of automatic DAO governance that runs the whole network. The first alternative to the centralized crypto cloud stack, built on crypto. That is a meaningful contribution. And in the short term, sometimes meaningful contributions go unnoticed. But in the long term, they generally do get noticed.
I want you to be smarter with your money. And in order to be smarter, you need to stop being a victim. I am very open about where I have gone wrong. I made huge gains in 2017 and 2018 in crypto. I tried to roll those into even bigger gains. I tried to roll those into even bigger gains in my business. And I lost. I was in the worst financial position I have ever been in. Instead of saying that I was a victim, when I was sitting with the bankruptcy attorney, I walked out of there deciding I did not want to declare bankruptcy, because I knew I had made myself broke, and I knew I could then bring as much money as I wanted back. Then I created my financial situation.
You are creating your financial situation
When you realize that you are creating your financial situation, then you will also start to be attracted to things that will help you create what you want to create. If you want to have a life of wealth, you need to have enough where you are at right now. When you feel it, and you know that I have enough right now and I am happy where I am at, you are in a better position to help other people do the same.
I am grateful that I can carry this message where so many people are carrying the opposite one. So many are carrying this message of greed and profits and pump and dumps, get in at the right time and get out at the right time, beat the other players. I do not want you to be in a game that is based on winners and losers. We can create this world in such a way where all of us are wealthy. Because if you have people who are wealthy and who are happy with their lives, you cannot trick those people into going to war as easily. But if you have people who are wealthy and other people who are broke and desperate, the desperate ones are much easier to manipulate and control. So I do not want you to be manipulated and controlled anymore.
People like me are difficult to manipulate and control, because I am the creator of my universe. I have made things how I want them. Then someone in a position of authority has a hard time getting me to do what they want unless it aligns with what I want. And I want a world of people who are governed by a collective group of individuals linked together. I want a world where the most valuable cryptocurrencies are the ones that have offered the most value to the world.
Value, not hype, over the long term
In the long term, Bitcoin is the crypto that has offered the most value to the world, and all the Bitcoin copycats have just been pump and dumps that have lost value over time. Ethereum offered a massive amount of value and utility to the world. And ICP, to me, is the next thing that has made that level of innovation. I do not even check the ICP price every day. I do not care. What I care about is where ICP is going eight, ten years from now.
If you want to be wealthy, you need to stop thinking short term. How do I get a 10X and exit? How do I get a 100X and exit? You need to think: how do I create long term wealth for me and everyone around me? How do I build a whole world full of wealthy people? There are so many ways to be selfish, and short term thinking is one of them. You either share what you have, or you choose the version of this game where you end up with a lot of cash and no one to go to.
Here is what I have come to believe from my own experience: you should actually use the cryptos you own. Never let your crypto just sit on an exchange. Do not shill a coin when you have no idea what it can do or why it is useful to the world, when you have never even really used it. I only found Internet Computer was amazing because I bought it, took it off an exchange, and used it a bunch. And I did that with hundreds of other altcoins. I bought them, took them off exchanges, tried to use them, and saw what they could do. That is how I got to, wow, this Internet Computer, this technology is better. Let's make a world where we reward better technology, where we reward building things that are useful, and let's stop rewarding people and blockchains that just copy other people's work and then put all the money into marketing.
Let's make crypto something to be proud of
Let's make crypto something we can be proud of instead of embarrassed about, where the reaction is not, oh, you do crypto, oh, you are one of those people. People understandably feel that way. People understandably look at crypto and are just like, gross. Because so much of it is people pumping, dumping, copying other people's work, launching a blockchain, and ripping people off with fake marketing. Let's make crypto something to be proud of. Where you put your money matters. And I have done it. If you want to see how I have walked through coin after coin the same way, I have shared all of that in my Crypto Reviews playlist.
When you just think short term, you will get punished for that thinking over and over again by things that felt like surprises but that you would have seen coming if you had looked long term. Some of you got surprised by taxes. If you sell a bunch of crypto you have made, even if you sell a little bit, you have to pay tax on that. If you make a 10X, you may blow up your tax bracket, and then the taxes on all the money you have made get pushed higher too. So I hope we can use crypto to make a better world. I am really disgusted with most of crypto, but I see a lot of promise and potential in crypto as well.