My friends, I sold one Ethereum today and I have a new crypto buying plan. I know this has been a big change, and I'm going to explain why to you and what I've learned out of it. I hope this will be useful as you build your crypto portfolio and plan your own crypto buying strategy going forward.
Why I Sold One Ethereum Today
So why did I sell one Ethereum today? Here is a look at my profit and loss so far with my business online. In the beginning of 2023 and right now, I have a profit of about $7,600, which means that even after having sold that Ethereum, I have actually bought more crypto than I've made this year. I've drained my savings. Meanwhile, I have bills to pay every month, and I was buying $50 a day in crypto based on the assumption that I would sell courses and take sponsorships for my crypto channel and make an average of $10,000 or more a month in profit.
But I ran into a big snag. I hate selling online courses, and I don't want to take sponsors on my videos for crap coins. I just want to make everything I create available to you for free. I don't want to try to sell you on a course while I'm educating people privately, meanwhile the masses get a lower quality education, and the whole thing is made to sell my course. I don't want to do that, so I'm now putting everything out for free.
Putting Everything Out for Free
I'm live streaming everything I'm creating on Twitch, and then I'm putting it out on all my different YouTube channels totally for free. That way, I can give you the same educational experience as everyone else. This means I'm going to make less money in the short term because of this, and therefore I need a new crypto plan. I can't just continue buying $50 a day without asking my wife for more money. I have been able to get by this year because my wife makes a good income, and I've asked her for money, and she already pays most of the bills, so I'm sick of doing that.
At the same time, I'm not just going to sell my soul for money. I want to give you the very best. I invite you to consider what you do for money, because for me it's very important. I do not do things just to get money, but I do things out of love and consideration for you. I think it's bad for me to sell you a course when I could just give it to you for free and allow you to support me through other methods.
Now here's the sell order I made for Ethereum today. I sold one Ethereum because Ethereum was my largest position, and technically I had bought this Ethereum earlier to buy Gods Unchained cards with. I sold those Gods Unchained cards, so in my accounting I effectively was buying that back from myself. Long story short, it's much simpler for my accounting if I just sell that Ethereum, and if I want some more, I buy it back later. So I sold that Ethereum, and now Bitcoin is the largest position in my portfolio. I still have more than one Ethereum in my portfolio.
My New Crypto Buying Plan
So here's my new crypto buying plan, and to me this is a plan that everybody could use. Basically I was already doing a version of this, but in order to make it more interesting, when I was doing the $50 daily buys, I estimated based on previous years of income and what I was capable of doing in the future. I was buying more than I could afford to buy each day at my current levels of earnings. I very much don't want to tell you this, but I find it's very important to be honest about the things I'd rather keep to myself.
So I've now made a crypto buying plan that will work no matter how much money I make each month in my business. If I make zero in business profit, then I can't buy any crypto that month. Now what I'm doing is taking 15% of my monthly profits and buying that the next month in crypto. I can buy it however I want, daily, weekly, but more than likely I'll make weekly or bi-weekly buys, because fewer transactions is easier for accounting. For example, let's say I make $10,000 in profit in the month of June. Then the next month I can make $1,500 in crypto buys.
In my understanding, 15% is the average percentage that millionaires invested over the course of building their millions into retirement portfolios and investments. So then the other 85% I get scraped for taxes on, I have bills to pay, I can pay down debt, and I can keep extra on hand in case I have a loss one month. Then I'm holding for a minimum of one year.
I chose to sell the Ethereum even though I hadn't held it for a year, because I overspent. Just as I did so many other times in crypto in the past, I put way too much money into crypto, to the point where I have like $2,000 total in all my bank accounts right now, which is pretty dumb when I have over a thousand a month in expenses. Now my wife has a great amount of savings. When I said I sold this Ethereum, she was like, "Why didn't you just ask me for more?" And I'm like, because I'm a grown man, and it's time to stop asking my wife for money when I have the ability to make it myself. The only reason I'm not making it myself is because I haven't set up a business system that honors what I love to do, that gives you what you want to receive, and that is sustainable for the future.
So the only times I'm intending to sell after this is when I've held for a minimum of a year, and I can sell either for 20x gains in low taxes, or I can balance my portfolio into different assets. For example, if a new asset comes along that I've researched and found, or that is launched on the market that I really like and I want to balance my portfolio a bit better, then after I've held at least a year, I can move around it under 20x gains within my portfolio. But what we are not doing is liquidating to fiat. This buying plan means that if I make a thousand in profit during a month, then I can buy $150. If you look at my income based on what I've made this year, I'd be buying about a thousand dollars in crypto for the entire year so far. Before selling this Ethereum, I had bought about $10,000 in crypto this year, so I'd put in way too much. So I've taken out to a level I can afford to hold, and that is easier for the accounting.
A Business System That Honors What I Love
Now with my business system, I am doing several different things. What I've come to believe is that I need a way to support my work that lets me stay honest, put everything out for free, and still keep going. So today, the best way to support what I'm doing and to work with me directly is to join the Jerry Banfield Family. In there I can review your portfolio if you'd like me to, you can message me anytime, and if you'd like coaching on anything, I've got that there. What I love about a community like this is that it's something I can have for any audience. I hate selling courses, because then I have to make a certain kind of content and present myself a certain kind of way. I can't be honest when I'm selling courses. I have to present myself like some expert and try to show you how smart I am and impress you, and I hate doing that crap. I really hate doing that crap. Then I have to constantly create on whatever subject I'm selling the course on, and it's all about my appearance and trying to impress you, and I hate that. I want to be real and raw, and the thing you can depend on with me is that I'm honest and I'm just telling you what's going on today. To me, that's a real value proposition.
I realize I need some additional methods to support my business though, because I get it, lots of you are not going to be interested in joining a community right now. Some of you I may need to mention it 10, 20, 30, 50 more times before you join. InvestAnswers told me about his Patreon probably 50 times before I joined it, so I understand it takes time. What I've been getting requests for is a Cameo. I just got an email off my link tree saying, "Hey, my friend's birthday is coming up, I'd love to send him a video of you saying happy birthday." So after years of people requesting it, I finally took 20 minutes today and set up a Cameo, where I'll send a little personal phone video, a handout happy birthday message, or an answer about a certain crypto, whatever you want, as long as it's a very short format video I can make within a couple of minutes. It's 20 bucks, and if you book it through the app, I probably get minus 30% out of that, so maybe like 12 or 13 bucks. This is cool because I much prefer just making a video instead of trying to sell you a course. I have six different YouTube channels and I'm streaming on Twitch, so it's really important that I can do everything on all these different topics and not just be stuck having to make crypto videos that sell courses.
Merch at Last
The last thing, some of you have been waiting for it. For years people have asked me to make merch, and I've dragged my feet on it. I've tried. And finally, literally in one single day today, in a few hours of my time, I've now got shirts. After a few streams and a few videos not wearing a shirt and getting your attention with those, and you really wishing I'd get a shirt, we've got four different kinds of men's t-shirts in all different colors. For example, this everyday shirt comes in all these different colors, and you've got lots of different sizes. I've got tank tops for the dudes and the ladies who like tank tops, women's shirts, and we've even got kids shirts, so you can get your toddler in a Jerry Banfield shirt too.
Putting merch up instead of paywalls
I ordered five of these shirts today for myself, and I'll be representing them on stream soon. The shirt I'm wearing right now is not one I can sell print on demand. This one was custom made and it cost a lot more, around fifty bucks to get printed just for me. The print-on-demand ones are much cheaper. If I give five dollars off, I still make around five bucks in profit on each of them, and I don't have to handle any of the orders myself. They print them on demand. So I'm going to get a bunch more products up on my store. I'm also considering offering some services on Fiverr, for example, where you could buy an honest video review of a crypto from me. We'll look into that.
Thank you very much for being a part of the journey here. I did not want to make this video today, but I realized this is the one thing you really need to talk about on your crypto channel, because people deserve to know why I changed my buying strategy. What happened to the fifty dollars a day? Why am I buying less crypto now? That is what we needed to talk about today.
Why I stopped selling courses
This is exactly why I wanted to stop selling courses. I made this six hour and forty-four minute crypto course totally for free. Back when I did sell it, I told everyone who bought my courses that anyone who paid for the coaching community got a one-on-one call with me and lifetime access to the Discord server, instead of having to pay on Patreon. Economically that was much better than paying for a call and joining Patreon on top of it. But what I really want is for everybody in the world to be able to watch my crypto course without having to pay for it. If that means I make less money in the short term, I'm fine with that. You can go watch the entire thing, my 101 crypto course, for free. I get a little bit of ad revenue, I think I've made about fifty bucks in ad revenue on that video, and that's enough for me.
In my experience, giving the work away for free is worth far more than locking it up. If you'd like to work with me more closely on any of this, the best way today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where I share what I'm doing and answer questions directly. That feels a lot better to me than pointing you at a checkout page.
Honest reviews and doing what feels right
If you miss my crypto reviews, I still go through and do honest ones. These days I leave star ratings on each crypto instead of just saying it sucks, and then I provide an explanation for that rating so you understand the reasoning behind it.
More than anything, I hope this gives you the courage to stop doing things for money in your life that don't feel good, and to figure out a different way. I've come to believe I'd much rather have less money than sell my soul for cash. If you want to see how I've worked through the money side of all this over the years, I've collected a lot of it in my Crypto Reviews playlist.
So I love you each, and thank you for your support. One fun detail: if you do buy any of the Jerry Banfield merch, it actually pops up a notification while I'm live on Twitch, so you can see my reaction to someone buying something. I tested that earlier today and it works. All right, there we go. I'll see you on the next one.