I think I called the bottom on ICP by posting a video yesterday saying I'm selling everything on ICP. Right after that happened, the price started to consistently pump. It has been pumping ever since, and we're around $3 at the time I'm making this. I think that's great, because I am going to continue holding a little less than half of my ICP.
Exactly what I'm selling
What I'm selling is a good portion of one locked-up neuron. Would I love to sell that for $10,000 or more? Yes. I've also got some ICP that I borrowed against on liquidity and put into my MaxFi positions, so I'll be selling to pull that loan out. But I'm still going to keep probably around 50% of my ICP. I am still going to cover ICP going forward as well, but the coverage is going to be more fair and balanced.
Over the years I had a lot of people consistently critical of me: you shouldn't have gone all in on ICP, crypto is not just ICP. To me, in terms of the technology in crypto, ICP is by far the biggest deal. The engineering team at DFINITY is unmatched in crypto. But we've got to be realistic about the marketing and the price going forward. I hope the ICP price continues to go up, especially because I can't actually sell this neuron for seven days and 21 hours. I'd love for the price to be four, five, or six dollars a week from now. That would be great, because I bought a lot of that ICP for around two dollars, and I'd love to be able to keep paying my rent.
I still love ICP, and going all in was a disaster
I still love ICP. I just need to be in a position to talk more honestly and holistically about it. Going all in on ICP, in terms of my own personal finances, was a disaster. I lost a lot of money. I lost so many opportunities, for sure. But I am still very supportive of the ICP technology, and I do still love the ICP community.
Even though some of my videos have sounded pretty confrontational and critical, I think men especially grow through confrontation and being challenged. That's why you have all these sports like football and basketball, which are confrontational, challenging sports. You have our presidential debates. You have arguments, you have back and forth. Now, yes, all of us need to be supported and loved. But often growth comes through challenge, like working out at the gym. I've heard you can grow just by imagining lifting weights, but what's most effective for me is actually exercising, and that tends to be challenging. I went for a three-mile run yesterday and the day before, and that helps me continue to grow and maintain. So I'm calling this community to grow. Our technology is awesome. DFINITY's engineering is unmatched. I'm hosting my website on ICP at jerrybanfield.com, and that sure as hell is never moving.
What I'd tell somebody new to crypto right now
Alternatively, though, if somebody new asked me, "Hey, I want to get into crypto, what would you recommend?" Right now, this is what I'd recommend, because it's what I'm doing. I've got my referral link for it at MaxFi. They're paying. They're paying to sponsor me, they sponsored that video with me, and they're supporting me. I've got people joining off my referrals now. This is the kind of money that allows me to do my content full time. You can see about $160 a day coming in.
Now, my portfolio has fallen a bit, because I'm in a bunch of degenerate meme coins on there, since those print the highest APRs. I'm a content creator first and foremost. I could put my money into more boring things that don't print as hard, but when I create content, I want to be able to focus on these insane yields and printing hard, even though my portfolio has slipped several hundred dollars. USDG Clippy has fallen like 50 percent. Juggernaut is taking a crap. Grass lost $25 in a single day. That was a good move. And Boner's not doing as well as I thought it would either. But that's fine, because my meme coins are printing. If you put your money into things that are more conservative, in my experience you're going to earn with much less risk and still get a solid portfolio yield.
I am grateful that I'm open to opportunities like MaxFi now, and I'm grateful Blockchain Pill helped me open up to opportunities like it. I'm grateful for everybody who reshared my content, even the people out there calling me names, because a number of people are calling me names. I posted that video yesterday and got about 96,000 reach on it.
Selling a little over half
I'm selling most of my ICP, which means I'll sell a little over 50 percent, because I don't need to have all of my investments in one single coin. For me, there are other opportunities to earn. And for somebody new to crypto, my first thought is actually not to buy ICP and hold and hope the price goes up forever. MaxFi is more like, hey, you want to start printing some money? That's what people are interested in, not holding a coin and waiting five years until governments adopt it.
So to be clear, I still love ICP, but I'm challenging ICP. I'm challenging the community to do better. I'm challenging DFINITY to step up and do better with the marketing, to put it in the hands of the community instead of trying to shoulder the burden yourselves, and to support the people like me. Maybe not me in particular anymore, but support the people like me who are doing a good job. The ICP community first and foremost should be self-sustaining. When someone like me is not able to be all in on ICP because it's not self-sustaining, that's not a good sign.
I'm excited to go forward with more honest coverage of ICP and not just say everything in crypto except ICP sucks. In terms of technology, that may be true, but there's a lot of real money being made in other places in crypto. Most people in crypto are here to make money. They're not here to invest based on values and what feels good, although I certainly believe in that.
Why I'm keeping half locked indefinitely
That's why I will keep about half of my portfolio in ICP indefinitely, and I will keep most of it locked up. When I'm getting all pissed off at ICP, I realize that's not a good sign in one way, but it could also be a bottom signal. We may have hit the max level of pain and dysphoria, and that's actually the point where things could take off. I wish I had been able to keep my Bitcoin locked. I wish I'd just lost my Bitcoin wallet for 10 years and then found it, because if I had simply held the Bitcoin I had 10 years ago, that would have worked out pretty well. So I'm planning to hold the majority of my ICP long term, locked up. Whenever things go really crazy, I'll sell the maturity and keep some liquid. But the all-in, only-ICP portfolio doesn't make sense to me anymore with everything I've seen.
I'm excited to see what kind of videos I'll do about ICP when I can talk very positively about the technology and the engineering DFINITY is doing, very positively about the partnerships they've made at a government level, and yes, about the marketing that needs to happen with that. Then I can also talk about other things in crypto like MaxFi and not feel like I'm betraying the ICP community.
Why I made so much drama over a small change
Part of what you've seen play out over the last couple of weeks is that as soon as I saw MaxFi, I thought, OK, I need to make some adjustments. This is plenty. This is a great opportunity for me, and it's a great opportunity for people in my audience. I had already seen Blockchain Pill getting attacked by people because of the blockchain, as in, "you're not just doing ICP content anymore, why are you doing this?" I saw those attacks and thought, OK, I'm going to need to reposition myself to do my content going forward.
To be fair, I care about numbers. I'm a content creator full time. That's what makes me a professional, both in terms of being effective and in terms of carrying my message the way I do it. So did I try to carry my message in a drama-filled way? Absolutely. Could I have minimized things and said, "Hey guys, I'm going to gently move a little bit of my money out of ICP into MaxFi, it's no big deal, don't worry about it, I'm just going to try this"? That's kind of what Alex at Blockchain Pill did. He said, hey, I'm just testing this out, I'm going to interview them. And he still got crap for that. But look what I did. I got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of impressions with the same basic message. I took the opportunity to challenge the ICP community to do better, because I knew I'd get hella crap for withdrawing from being an ICP maxi. I got a lot of views, and I did a lot of great marketing, for what is really a pretty gentle transition.
Paying off the loan and paying rent with real cash
Hopefully the price keeps going up. I'll sell $10,000 or $15,000 of my ICP and pay off the loan I took against my ICP, so that none of my ICP is sitting there as collateral. I'm not big into leverage. Leverage is nice short term, but I don't want to have my crypto in a leveraged position. I'd rather have it locked, because with leverage I don't want to get liquidated and I don't want to think about it. So I want to put some more into these positions, maybe a few thousand more, then put a few thousand in the bank and actually pay my rent with real cash instead of taking cash advances.
This is what I do full time, and I've got to say, I think it's kind of genius to make so much drama over such a small change. I know some of you got all fired up and take all this stuff super seriously. I see the people calling me names and posting all over the place and going nuts, and Pierre unfollowing me. And it's like, guys, I was just selling a little bit of my ICP to move it over to MaxFi. Relax. This is what content creation is.
I just did a video on my Jerry Banfield for Creators channel about exactly this, and the thumbnail tells the story. When I made a new crypto game called Meme Coin Dynasty, which is pretty cool, only one person bought it on jerrybanfield.com. It's awesome. You launch your own meme coin, it's pretty realistic, I tested it a whole bunch, and I made it with AI. That post got about 2,500 reach, or views, or whatever we're calling these now.
Then I do a video saying I'm selling most of my ICP and going all in was a huge mistake, and it gets 95,000 views. My bottom line is views and money. My goal is to help people with my content, but I don't get to do my content if I don't make money. So I just had to pull back the curtain a little bit. Once I saw MaxFi, I knew I needed to make some adjustments, and if I go hard and do drama about my adjustments, I also get the benefit of challenging the community to grow and do better, and I get maxed out on reach. Anyway, I'm going to keep going: maximum drama, maximum reach, maximum people talking about me. It was very successful. That absolutely worked.
People are signing up, including friends who never asked about ICP
People are signing up on MaxFi now, and I'm starting to get fees from my referrals on MaxFi already, which is a really good sign. Any time people sign up and almost immediately start earning fees, that's a really good sign. I have people in real life saying, "I want you to set this up for me." People I know in real life who've never done crypto. They've heard me talk ICP for years, and not once, not once, did they ask about buying ICP. But I mentioned this, $160 a day, and they said, "All right, let me give you a few thousand, why don't you set that up for me?" I literally spent the whole morning doing that with a friend in real life. So that's a good sign about crypto, a very good sign, and something to learn from.
ICP coverage going forward
I think I'm in a much more reasonable position now, not being all in on ICP. So I'm going to continue doing content. I've got lots of great ideas for videos on my ICP Crypto playlist. I'm going to FUD and criticize ICP when I feel like it, and I'm going to hype and say what's positive about ICP when I feel like it. I hope that makes better content than me coming out here like some ICP preacher every day and telling you what you want to hear.
I appreciate all of you loving and supporting me. And for those of you who think I should get what's coming to me, if you think there's karma for being dramatic online, I had a date yesterday, and I swear to God, if any of you had sat across from me and gone off on me about my videos, you would probably have been more gentle than this date was. And this woman had never even seen my content online. You can watch more about that on my dating channel.