Nothing Matters Unless the Price Goes Up?
I make these ICP videos every day, and apparently nothing I present or talk about matters unless the price goes up. Every time I mention something incredible, like the 15 billion lines of code that, according to Dominic Williams, Caffeine AI generates, the first comment is, "Well, it doesn't matter unless an app goes viral." I show Pierre and Multidex and all that, and it's "Well, it doesn't matter unless the price goes up." And I'm just like, the technology is mattering. It is huge. And this will be why the price goes up.
So many viewers keep demanding that all these things happen. For example, a year or two ago, everybody was saying nobody's building on ICP. Then Dominic Williams shows, as I covered in my video yesterday, 15 billion lines of code, which is a lot — a lot on Caffeine AI already. And a lot of that's in a new programming language called Motoko, which is optimized for AI. It's amazing to get a new programming language used straight by AI instead of humans even having to learn it. These are the kinds of things people were fantasizing about a year ago while saying the ICP price isn't going to move because nobody's using it. So here comes data showing that, oh, there's a lot of actual code being written on a blockchain. Right? And then the comment is, "Well, that's cool, but it doesn't matter unless people actually use the apps." And even when all the users come, then it'll be, "Well, where's the revenue?" And then the revenue comes — "Well, but the price isn't moving." And then whenever the price does move, everybody will care about the tech, the developers, the AI, the infrastructure.
That's the opportunity, because right now so many people are convincing themselves that everything about ICP doesn't matter because the price hasn't moved. Any time there's an indicator they're looking for and they find it, they just rationalize why that's not it.
Broadband Versus Dial-Up
I think of this like broadband versus dial-up internet. Where ICP wins, to me, is the infrastructure they've built. It doesn't matter whether one particular use case succeeds or not, because there are so many other ones. Dial-up internet sucked in 2001, but it was so much better than having no internet. It sucked playing games like Counter-Strike and Quake on dial-up internet. It was just so slow, and you'd get wrecked by whoever had broadband. Then when I finally got my dad to upgrade to broadband, there was no going back to dial-up internet for me. Now that I'd got a taste of that hundred-millisecond ping, now that I could get out there and destroy the dial-up internet people, I was not going back. And America Online? Finished.
ICP is like that. I've built my website on ICP, and I try to show it all the time because it's not some speculative "maybe someday" — I've got my website on ICP right now. I've built the dream business system, and I've just barely got it started. I have my own version of OpenChat on there at jerrybanfield.com/chat. I've got a leaderboard built in where you can tip or buy anything. I'm going to start putting courses up on this website. Comedy. I've got a tips page where you can leave a tip and have a comment — Blonde Trolls was the first one ever to use it, thank you very much. Everybody can make a profile on there. This tech is a huge deal. The fact that I can build this on ICP means I'm also going to be staying on ICP indefinitely, burning cycles to pay for my website. This is a huge deal because you can't do it on another blockchain, and because without ICP, I don't know how I'd even build this and keep it secure. I need that Motoko programming language.
When I do a big update, like I did yesterday, it just works. I did a big update to my website where I had Claude go through and change thousands of my blog posts, all to put the call to action to my new store items — where you have the chat option, the talk-to-me, the Zoom call. I had Claude edit thousands of pages of code on my website on the ICP blockchain, and it just did all that, and it was no big deal. So there's no going back for me to hosting on WordPress and then Google Cloud, and then having a WordPress theme and trying to put WooCommerce in there, and then the whole website goes slow, and then I have to optimize the whole thing with all these other plugins. This is better infrastructure. There's no going back for me to the old way I was doing things.
You Don't Need to Know Which App Wins
And that is the opportunity: recognizing that this is infrastructure that's vastly superior to other options. Once builders get into this, it's going to just continue to grow and grow, because it's that much better. The comments of "Well, it doesn't matter unless the price moves," "Well, it doesn't matter unless people actually use these lines of code," "Well, it doesn't matter unless that's generating revenue," "Well, it doesn't matter unless the revenue is bigger" — you don't need to know which thing on ICP is going to win, because the infrastructure can do all of it.
It reminds me of broadband internet, where someone could have been saying the same thing: "Well, it doesn't matter if you're playing games on broadband internet, because everybody else has to play games on it too." No — broadband internet can stream video. You can do everything on broadband internet. Broadband internet set things up like social media. It made things possible that weren't even possible before on dial-up internet. It would be silly to look at something like broadband internet 20 years ago and say, "Well, unless everybody starts playing video games on it, nobody's going to use it. Everybody will just stay on dial-up internet because most people don't play video games." Think about the level of thinking that is — people just keep using what they've already got unless they play video games. And that's how people look at ICP. It's like, "Well, everybody's just going to keep building on Ethereum and Solana." No — once they find there's something vastly better, they're going to move. That's what happens with technology. When people were on MySpace and then they found Facebook, they were off MySpace, and MySpace died. It takes time, though. But when you build something that's vastly superior and people find it, they refer it via word of mouth, and it brings so many people in.
I'm bringing hundreds of people a day through my website, which is creating hundreds of transactions a day for my website. Then I created thousands of transactions yesterday updating my website and querying it. Just me, just one little person here, using this infrastructure. I single-handedly have helped tens of thousands of people discover ICP and start to research it and think about it.
All these objections are like self-sabotage, because what you want to do is look at the big picture. The big picture is that ICP has built technology that matters a lot. And it doesn't matter whether OpenChat succeeds, or my website succeeds, or Caffeine AI succeeds, or the Pakistan national messenger app succeeds, or the Swiss subnet in Switzerland succeeds, or Multidex succeeds, or cloud engines. Somebody told me on a call scheduled at jerrybanfield.com that if cloud engines don't succeed, it's over for ICP. What? That's one single function that ICP can do. When Utopia didn't succeed, was it over for ICP? Some people said so. No. Now there's cloud engines, which is an even better version of Utopia. You don't need to know which one of these things is going to succeed.
Every single data point is easily critiquable in a vacuum. "Well, who cares about 15 billion lines of code? Nobody's actually using those apps." Look at the big picture: fifteen billion lines of code. Cloud engines. Pakistan testing a national messaging app. The Switzerland subnet — people in Switzerland saying everybody's talking about ICP there, which is where DFINITY is headquartered. Switzerland, a lot of money comes through there; it's a very important little country. You see me every day flaunting my website, with people coming into my website straight from Google search and from all my videos, using the actual blockchain. You've got all these other apps building, all these other people building. You've got wallets like Oisy, lending protocols like Liquidium. You've got other people like Bobby O, Blockchain Pill, Zero to Hero, Michael Duffy — lots of other people talking about ICP who understand what's happening here.
My 80 Bitcoin Mistake
And then the question is: are you going to be late? Are you going to miss this opportunity? Are you going to keep waiting and hesitating? Are you going to miss buying at $2 so that you're then buying at $4? This is what I did with Bitcoin. I bought so much Bitcoin — I had like 80 Bitcoin in 2014. And I talked myself into selling all of it, because I figured I could buy it lower. It's the way a lot of you think about ICP. You're doing the same thing. You're losing faith, thinking about dumping it. You figure it's going to go to a dollar and you can accumulate more later. But what happens when it goes up to four or five dollars? You'll be doing what I did with Bitcoin, feeling pretty dumb that you sold all of it at a small profit. Well, just some of it — the coins I bought at the very bottom went at a small profit; others I sold at a significant loss, just to kind of get out of it, because I couldn't take it. And then I started DCAing back in at $300, and I DCAed in up to $500. Think about how ridiculous that is: I bought as low as $170 and as high as $500, bought all the way down to $170, sold everything at $200-something, then started DCAing back in at $300-something and DCAed all the way in almost to $1,000.
That's what a lot of people are setting themselves up for with ICP: having bought higher, given up, sold everything — the tech doesn't matter, the partnerships don't matter, it all doesn't matter. And then there are going to be so many people who already exited ICP, who already capitulated and gave up, and when the price goes to like $5 or $10, they're going to be the ones buying back in. They're going to be the ones saying, "Oh man, I knew this technology was great before," DCAing back in at higher levels. The problem is, you'll have missed the best opportunity.
Until the price moves, a lot of people are not going to care about ICP. That's the opportunity, though — if you can look deeper and see that, in my view, everything's perfectly in position for ICP. The developers are here. You've got people building at record levels. I would argue that more people are building stuff on the ICP blockchain right now than all other blockchains combined, according to the lines of code that Dominic showed, including everyone using Caffeine AI.
Censored From the Developer Report
And ICP — they censored ICP from the Electric Capital Developer Report because it exploded to just crush everything else. They censored that, saying that AI building doesn't count. Here's the thing: AI building on the blockchain does count. It does count for usage. It does count for apps. It does count for cycles. When you have content creators like me showing people on my YouTube coach channel how I built my website on ICP and built this whole business system with it, it does matter. When you have people using the blockchain who don't even know they're using it, it does matter. When you have governments like Pakistan trying to figure out if they can move their infrastructure on chain, and Switzerland with ICP going off there, it does matter.
And that's the opportunity: to figure out that it matters before everybody else does. Once the price moves, it'll be obvious that all this mattered, and the opportunity is seeing that it mattered before it was obvious. I feel very grateful to have seen this. The progression that's important goes like this: the technology is here. Then, are people building on it? Yes. Are applications being built? Yes. Are there users? Yes. Is there economic activity? Yes. Everything is in position, and then market recognition will come. Meanwhile, most people in crypto want market recognition first — "market recognition, therefore the technology is good." It's ridiculous.
I'm Using the Tech Myself
I don't need somebody to tell me ICP might be useful. I don't need somebody to validate my thesis. I'm using the tech myself. The tech is incredible, and I'm a tech nerd. Just building this leaderboard out — this is so much better. I'm going to get my comedy on my website. I'm going to get a course on there. I've got tips on there. I've got browser games on there. I have my own version of OpenChat on there, and I can just instantly upgrade it. I've got the Motoko programming language to help protect me from breaking everything by accident. I've got the blog on there with thousands of blog posts. This matters. This is a huge deal. This is not incrementally better. This is not a hundred milliseconds faster. This is not some fake decentralized exchange that raised a whole bunch of money trading perps. This is a huge deal. This tech matters a whole lot. This is game-changing, everything's-different technology, just like broadband internet. And there are those of us who are disciplined, who do our research, who are patient, who are using it, who are in position.
Not Financial Advice — And What I Stand to Gain
Now, this isn't financial advice, and anything could happen. I hold a lot of ICP. I believe I stand to make millions and millions of dollars being right about this, and if I'm wrong about it, I'm going to be surprised — very surprised. I'm going to be very rich when I'm right about it, and I'd say in my estimation, in 90% of scenarios I'm going to be very rich and right, and in 10% of the scenarios I may have to move in with my mom. And it's fine, because I've got other channels.
I appreciate all of you who have watched my other channels. I have this Jerry Banfield channel, my third channel — I just applied for monetization on it yesterday, and to get full monetization we need a thousand subscribers. I do awesome daily vlogs on that channel; if you haven't watched them yet, give them a try. If you're single, I invite you to watch my dating videos — they're fantastic. I've got games. I've been listening to my own music every day again. I have a YouTube coach channel, and I do very deep research on this crypto reviews channel as well, including my ICP Crypto playlist. I'm getting ICP out to a lot of people there, and I'm available to talk on jerrybanfield.com. I'm going to make an ICP course soon — instead of putting out all the tutorials for free on YouTube, I am going to follow best business practices and put all that stuff in a course on my website at a low price and sell it.
And I hope you don't miss the opportunity with ICP because of some arbitrary comment or narrow-minded thinking.