Today is a sad day for me in the ICP community, and I'm not sure what to do going forward. I'll start off with the headline. Pierre, the chief business officer for DFINITY, was following me before, and he has now unfollowed me after my recent posts talking about ICP marketing. In those recent posts, my goal has been to have the discussion we need to have in the community, and the discussion we need to have is marketing. What's happening with the ICP marketing? Why have ICP hubs been paid tens of millions of dollars, potentially, to accomplish almost nothing? Why are the content creators like me, who are doing the most to support ICP in terms of public marketing, getting nothing, with no program set up to even support us? Why?
I'm frustrated. I made a really toxic version of this video that I actually deleted. I thought, okay, we don't need to totally burn the bridge with the whole ICP community, because I imagine most of the ICP community actually supports me and is grateful for my work. However, on platforms like X, what you have are a lot of loudmouth haters, and the loudmouth haters make it look like most of the community is against me. Really, that's not the case. I can imagine DFINITY is a little sensitive on the subject of marketing, and on me talking about how long the price is going to stay suppressed with what's happening with the marketing. I'm not sure what to do going forward from here. I don't think it's a good idea to just burn the bridge. At the same time, continuing to focus my crypto content on ICP is clearly unsustainable and clearly not appreciated by DFINITY.
Weeks of discussion, and nobody from DFINITY reached out
Pierre did not reach out to me while we've been having this ongoing discussion about content creators and ICP marketing for weeks, ever since Dominic Williams offered 7,500 ICP to somebody posting fraud against ICP to reveal their sources. Since then, the discussion has been going like this: hey, why don't you pay the people who are supporting ICP, consistently doing that, and getting it out to a lot of people? I'm also seeing a lot of confusion. What I've said is that I'm not just going to cover ICP when there are other opportunities, that we should have a marketing fund on the Network Nervous System, and that it's much more profitable for me to promote coins I don't believe in. I said I'm not going to just keep making ICP videos as a volunteer, that I'm a professional, and professionals get paid.
Here's the problem with things like X. I say "I'm done marketing ICP for free," which was just a toxic title to get it out there. I was responding to somebody who made a post in the forums that ICP needs a marketing fund. DFINITY didn't chime in. Most every comment responding to it was toxic. I was defining how much my work is worth and saying that we should have a marketing fund on the Network Nervous System. Somehow the community turned this into every negative thing you can imagine about me, which is ridiculous, for all that I've done for ICP and how little I've gotten in return for it, outside of the many of you who've directly supported me, and you shouldn't have to do that.
DFINITY paid out tens of millions of dollars to people who accomplished almost nothing for ICP. The ICP hubs are an absolute total flop. DFINITY has paid out what looks like millions of dollars to employees to do marketing, and if they helped get the partnerships we have today, then they did something valuable. But there's still no public accountability, and I don't know what to do from here. I'm not listening to just anything, either. You can message me at jerrybanfield.com by joining the chat, or you can join my Skool community. If you're not supporting me, I don't need to hear what you have to say.
The $25,000 grant at $12 per ICP
I've been supporting ICP for a long time. DFINITY gave me $25,000 in 2024 after my videos reached millions of people. I went all in on ICP in 2023, and my audience was pissed. My audience was very upset that I had hyped all these other coins up and then sold all of them for ICP. I lost a huge section of my audience going in on ICP, and now that doesn't look like it was such a great move. I've had people who've been very upset with me over the years saying, "You know what? I shouldn't have listened to you. If I'd have just held my Bitcoin, if I'd have held the $100,000 I had in Bitcoin when you went all in on ICP, today I'd have several hundred thousand. Instead, I've lost 50-plus percent on my ICP." Yes, I've gotten wrecked too. I've lost tens of thousands of dollars on ICP. I held most of the $25,000 DFINITY gave me, and at the time they gave it to me, ICP was $12. If you look at the cost basis for the ICP DFINITY gave me, I effectively got a few thousand dollars from DFINITY, because the price has absolutely tanked, and I made the mistake of locking it up and holding it instead of just selling it.
I need to acknowledge that there's been so much support from so many individual people liking my videos, resharing, and watching, although I am very sad to see what's happened on YouTube. It's like half my ICP audience left overnight. Once I started talking about how we need to do marketing and that I'm not just going to tell you guys what you want to hear every day, they left. A lot of times in life, people's first response to making some change and having hard discussions is to run and to attack. Like Pierre unfollowing me on X: "Oh God, got to get away from him. Got to get out of here." When really, if you want to do better, in interpersonal relationships and in business, you need to stick around for hard discussions. You need to be comfortable having hard discussions, and today you should be comfortable having them in public.
Why I'm having this discussion in public
Some people have been critical, saying I should talk to DFINITY about this and not be talking about it in public. I disagree, because DFINITY's marketing has been a pain point for everybody investing in ICP for years. I simply kind of ignored that, and if anything, I contributed to it being okay for years. They're dumping millions and millions of dollars into ICP hubs that mostly waste that money, and we have no accountability for where it went. Then they're dumping money into things like thousands of dollars for some random anonymous trader on X, which makes me wonder: was that given to an insider? Did somebody on the inside just farm that for themselves, knowing how it worked? I don't know. There's no accountability, and we need accountability. We need to be able to have hard discussions.
Look at what happened on YouTube. As soon as I made the video saying I'm done marketing ICP for free, the views started tanking immediately. Nobody wants to talk marketing. Nobody wants to even watch a video about it. The watch time goes down. This is a big problem in content creation generally: unless you're telling people what they want to hear, they often don't want to listen. I feel like I've been telling the ICP community what the community wanted to hear for years, and the problem is that's often not useful. Being told what you want to hear every day is not where you're going to learn and grow. That's why I learn and grow so much, and why I thrive as a content creator, because people are always telling me what I don't want to hear.
I'm sad that it looks like DFINITY can't stand to hear my suggestions for marketing, that there's a way we could do better marketing. Nobody from DFINITY reached out to me, and I'm one of the very top content creators, probably the number one ICP content creator in terms of reach over the last three years since I've been in the ecosystem. Bobby O and Blockchain Pill have certainly been here longer, and I brought in some content creators myself. Those content creators weren't supported, and most of them stopped creating content too.
Robinhood Chain videos get double the views
I am grateful for how many opportunities I have available outside ICP. I started covering Robinhood Chain on my Crypto Reviews channel, which has fewer subscribers, and the Robinhood Chain video got double the views that my newest ICP videos have gotten, because there are lots of viewers who would love to see coverage on Robinhood Chain. The crypto community outside of ICP is large, and I can easily access all of it because I'm a professional content creator who grinds out a lot of content. I think I'm going to go back to community farming, because I can get all kinds of followers and subscribers all over the place. All I've done with ICP is cost myself money, and I feel like I've just spun my wheels creating ICP content.
The technology is advanced, but even right now it's a leap of faith that the technology is going to actually get significant adoption and that adoption is going to move the ICP price. The tech could get significant adoption in several different ways and not move the ICP price that much, at least in the next few years. The tech could be in the process of getting big adoption and not move the price much. And the rest of crypto has every incentive to keep the ICP price down using any means necessary. The rest of crypto has every incentive to attack the ICP infrastructure repeatedly until a weak point is found. I'm glad so far there hasn't been one, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be in the future.
So I'm not sure what to do with my content. I don't want to go around FUDding ICP every day. I'm not going to sell all my ICP, but I'm going to put my ICP to work in other places, like MaxFi. I made $400 on MaxFi in less than a week, even though some of the positions I've had have dropped. I think one was at $3,700, and some of these meme coins tanked pretty hard, so I lost some money in those. Overall, I got in at a bad time in the short term on some of them, because they tanked after I got in. But I've also got about $500 sitting in my MetaMask account, so even when the meme coins go down quite a bit, I made so much money on fees. MaxFi sponsored a video on my channel, and MaxFi is working with me going forward. It's such a sharp contrast to ICP. I made so much content, and the community itself, individual people, have supported me and scheduled calls, but for years there's been nothing from DFINITY, nothing from the Network Nervous System, and absolute opposition in the community. Then you have projects like MaxFi that are very enthusiastic to support me, that love my content, and that want me to cover them.
You have viewers on Robinhood Chain who've never seen me before and are ready to jump in and follow my channel. That one video about Robinhood Chain brought 22 subscribers, people jumping right in, ready to subscribe and support me. I do believe in the tech for the future, and I sure hope all the stuff I've said about ICP in the past is right. But what I've seen out of the community and DFINITY is pretty negative. Look at these last videos: I lose two subscribers on one, and net zero subscribers on another. People don't want the house to be clean. People want to be told what they want to hear. I made a private video to Bobby O and Blockchain Pill, and I got one subscriber talking about it. I'm done talking about how we could do a viral flywheel with marketing. I actually got a couple of subscribers on that one, which is interesting.
How do you cover ICP when only the tech looks good?
I don't know what to do from here, but it's not going to be marketing ICP for free. That's for sure. I'm not even sure how to cover ICP without covering the tech, because if you look at the price and the marketing, it looks pretty bad. The tech looks pretty good. The price and the marketing look pretty bad. Especially with Pierre unfollowing me, it's pretty clear there's no support, no care, and no consideration for me, and that my work easily means nothing overnight. All that I've done before easily means nothing if I'm going to bring up what needs to be talked about, and the marketing for ICP is what needs to be talked about endlessly. The technology is good. That's covered. We're doing great on that. The marketing for ICP should not just be marketing to governments and to the United Nations while the price gets suppressed. I'm glad to see the price going up a little bit, but let me know what you think at jerrybanfield.com, where the Skool community or the chat is the best place to reach me.
From here, for me, it's going to be covering lots of different coins and different DeFi protocols, and putting my content creation into places where people are going to pay me and support me, where I can get thousands of dollars a month from projects to cover them. If I need to be an ambassador, fine. God forbid, even Kaspa, and there's no way Kaspa would pay me, given how many times I've FUDded them, but you get the point. If I can cover some projects and get paid for it, that's the number one objective. I can see from all these years of marketing ICP and talking about the tech that having values, principles, and integrity does not equal a paycheck for me. It doesn't equal a community that won't turn on me, either. Obviously many of you in the ICP community are very supportive, but a third to half of the community immediately turned on me, backstabbed me, and ran away, including Pierre, one of the most important people in the community. Instead of reaching out and messaging me and saying, "Hey, I see you're frustrated, why don't you talk to me?" he just unfollowed. That's a very bearish sign for ICP in general.
Pierre could have reached out before I spiraled. Pierre could have reached out long before. Maybe there's outreach to others, but if you're not talking to me, it doesn't matter and it doesn't count. Pierre's not talking to me, so it doesn't count. Whatever else might be being done elsewhere is not being done with me. It's pretty sad that after all I've done for ICP we've gotten to this point. But that's life, and I'm grateful to accept the opportunities I have in other places. This is open space. I can actually get a paycheck in crypto. I should be able to make tens of thousands of dollars a month doing my crypto videos, instead of a few hundred a month in ad revenue and agonizing through calls on the Network Nervous System for a few hundred more a month, and then hoping something's going to change.
What's actually making money in crypto right now
I'm really excited to start making some good money in crypto again, like I have in the last few weeks. I'm excited to show my audience what's working to actually make money in crypto today, because ICP is not working to make money in crypto today. MaxFi is printing money. Even when the meme coins tank, the earnings make up for it. This is working. I have a friend in person who wants to give me $5,000 to set this up for them. This is working to print money in crypto. Even when the positions themselves tank 30 percent, the earnings are so high that it still covers it. So it's time for me to start looking at what's actually making money in crypto. In some ways, I feel like I just did this video before, talking about what's actually making money in crypto.
I don't know how I'm framing it: the ICP rebellion versus the crypto empire, which side are you on? I kind of feel like I'm switching sides. I'm leaving the rebellion behind. Okay, guys, the rebellion is getting crushed. It's not going well. Maybe they can blow the Death Star up in the future, but it's not looking good right now. The price is up a tiny bit, but again, every time the price moves, there's no reason for whoever's been taking out huge amounts of longs against ICP to stop doing that. You may get some price moves for a while, but there's no reason, when the ICP price shoots up, not to pull out a huge amount of longs and crush it again. You're going to have to have some hellacious adoption to make up for that, because almost nobody's going to speculate on something that keeps getting crushed the way the ICP price does. Until you get such serious adoption that real usage is driving the price rather than speculation, it could be a long road, and I've got a lot of other money to make in the meantime. You can see everything I've said about it before in my ICP Crypto playlist.
I wish everybody could talk as honestly as I do. I wish DFINITY could come out and speak: "Hey, we've struggled with the marketing. We don't know what we're doing with the marketing, and we'd value your feedback." That would probably be honest of them. Or maybe they'd say, "You know what? Our marketing plan is on a 20-year roadmap. We don't care about the ICP price in the short term. We don't care if you all get wrecked, because we're all getting paid. We don't need the ICP price to appreciate in the foreseeable future. We've got everything set up for the long term." If they came out and said that publicly, everybody would sell. And that may be the truth behind the scenes. Thanks for watching. I'm going to wrap up now.