One thing today were going to be talking about a business model in crypto that is so toxic that it must stop now and Im talking about the token or coin promotion business. It acts as a poison chalice passed from one bull runs influencers to the next, and I can tell you that Im sorry that I did them knowing what I know now about the way this business works. I wish I could go back in a DeLorean and tell myself not to do it, but look making money in crypto as a content creator, its its a good thing. People build businesses, its not a bad thing, however, were moving on to our fourth Bitcoin. Bull Run and our third altcoin cycle, and now things are becoming clear on what works and what doesnt work corporate sponsors. If change sponsorships, wallet, sponsorships, Unstoppable domains, great partnership paid newsletters courses. These are all things that are okay to do in crypto, in my opinion, but promoting tokens, it doesnt work and, I would really say: promoting nfts, probably fits that same model, also taking private sale Investments with an expectation from a project that youre going to give them Coverage for that those things are not okay and theyre, damaging to the space. When I became my YouTube channel the model that I had from the YouTubers from 2017, there were a lot of undisclosed promotions. There were a lot of pumping their own bags, a lot of pump and dumps.

Of course, not every YouTuber fit that description, but that was a very common thing back then that was the model that was passed on, obviously that wasnt a good model. So I thought to myself when I began my career here on YouTube. If I disclose every ad I ever do that will be enough and certainly dont ever pump and dump its not an advantageous strategy, long term for a YouTube channel that plans to be around as long as I am. But what I didnt realize was that in reality, theres nothing, you can do to defend the token promotion. Business see theres a lot of predators out there and sometimes the audience feels like the prey. But I can tell you. I definitely have felt like the prey, as well from a fundamental standpoint, tokens that want promotion, theyre, really only after one thing, theyre wanting to see the price of their token go up. They want to shortcut the hard work of creating a product that stands for itself and crypto, of course, would be a platform or whatever it might be, but wheres the value, many of these projects they launch and they raise money and they havent even built the thing. Yet, and sometimes I can be a little naive and I can be too trusting and I would listen to people when they would tell me their use case and what they were building and they would get me excited its like man.

Yeah. That sure does sound like something thats going to be good. My audience will like it yeah its going to do great and it might do great for a week or two after a video, but like 95 of those projects, are dead or are at least not on the right track. There are certainly a few exceptions but think about the projects that never did token promotions, cardano, xrp, BNB, sandbox, Litecoin, even ethereum. They didnt need to do token promotion because they were really passionate about building something and that took the priority and when those projects fail or the prices go down, who wins and who loses, of course, in any buy or sell 50 of the people win 50. Lose that 50 percent who win in this case tilted heavily towards one specific group. I know what youre thinking I think, its the YouTubers, you think its the influencers, no its the founders of those projects, its the teams, looking to get the promotion done because its the perfect setup, they do a promotion and a video comes out. Awareness gets brought to the project, they may do several videos in one day and then all of a sudden awareness and people get excited and they start buying this token and the price goes up just enough for the founders to cash out, but guess whos left holding The back the person that did the video, because we are the front facing person, so the people who win are the teams, the founders, the Insiders they dumped the coin.

They take advantage of the liquidity from the users who go in and buy it and meanwhile theres a time stamp on a chart of a moment where a video came out, and quite often that can be exactly where the difference between winning and losing sits. And so what does that? Look like the people doing the videos are the ones doing it, but this, as I said earlier, is a predatory business and certainly there are some YouTubers out there that have done that. I mean thats a guarantee, but I know the people in this space. I know almost every big YouTuber and they understand whats at stake when you do things that are immoral or unethical or maybe even illegal, most of them arent willing to take that risk. Its common sense, but the evidence looks so damning because the video and the chart they align and your big boy crypto. We put in a lot of policies to try to fit these token promotions into a box where, if they all fit a certain qualification, it would be a winning deal for everybody. But each time we put in a new policy it wouldnt end up working. There would be a new wrinkle because the vast majority of the people aiming to do these token promotions, theyre just looking for shortcuts and Quick Cash outs and when the source is flawed. Youre never going to be able to construct a consistent winning formula and people might think its a critical for me to come out in this video and say people need to stop doing these token promotions, because sure I made money doing them and now Im telling the Future group of YouTubers and the current growing YouTubers stop this practice, but if I could go back in time, I would stop myself from doing it.

The reputational damage weve suffered because of this business is worth much more than the money that we made so with every Bull Run and bear Market. We take three steps forward and then we take two steps back well. A big reason for these two steps back is because of these promotions and the hype around them. They really fit. What the new person in crypto is looking for, that comes in during the big part of the Bull Run, theyre looking for a shortcut because they werent in early enough. If youre watching this video youre in early enough for the next Bull Run and the people who create new tokens, they know that and they wait for this time when new people come in and they come in and they pray on the new people in crypto and The influencers that are rising and growing quickly it shortcuts for everybody its a shortcut in the mind of the new crypto investor because they think theyre going to get rich overnight. Its a shortcut for the YouTuber or influencer, because theyre able to bring in money quickly and its certainly a shortcut for the token Founders who are planning on cashing out so this isnt about me. I didnt have to make this video. This is about whats best for crypto. This is about protecting new investors who come in and keeping them from the toxicity and poison that inflicts damage on every new wave of investors weve ever seen in crypto as long as all coins have been around so guys.

Dont end up having to say youre, sorry, one day, just dont do them. You have to understand how important this is for adoption really. So we I feel, like Ive paid, my Penance, we havent done a single bit of sponsored or monetized anything on the channel this year outside of Affiliates weve, even given away our YouTube AdSense money to our Pluto Alliance and ft holders. We pulled back very hard because we wanted to make sure that we get this right, but guys I run a business with 50 employees. Everybody works really hard here and the channel. Well, it needs to produce income. I have employees who have families who need to eat and need to get paychecks and that money just doesnt come out of thin air. So we need to start a conversation in this space about whats, appropriate and whats, not appropriate affiliate deals for products or platforms that you actually use and get value out of. Well, we think those are okay, a lot of people think with leveraged trading sites, that the influencers or Affiliates get paid more money. If people get liquidated thats absolutely false. The idea that works is to teach people how to trade successfully, and then they have a long trading career because they can keep winning its way more advantageous for Traders to win for Affiliates than to lose its, not sustainable. If someone loses, they come onto a site once put some money on deposit, lose it and they never come back, but as always, we also have to do a better job in the space of having people understand, not your keys, not your crypto on a leveraged trading Site or a spot trading site or a staking platform, if its not on chain, you dont have your private keys and really driving that home to this next generation of crypto investors is going to be absolutely huge.

We all failed in that during this last Bull Run. When you look at Celsius – and you look at Voyager, you look at other platforms, it went unsolve it so. Promoting exchanges in third party sites is fine as long as you make sure that youre telling your audience that there is risk there just because they dont own. The private keys, so they shouldnt ever put all their money onto a third party, a good general rule of how much money you should have on a platform is: if that platform went insolvent, will it break you? If the answer is yes, then you need to diversify. Giving audience things of value like trading courses or paid discords or monetize newsletters proprietary products that a channel creates or an influencer creates, like those things are probably fine too Id actually say that they are for sure corporate sponsors look Ill. Tell you what if bang energy drink wants to sponsor me Ill, take it but Im not the end, all be all in crypto. Yes, we have the largest channel in the United States, but this conversation needs to be had other influencers and YouTubers need to probably see this video because its time we take a stand for the future of this space and no, I cant force anyone to do anything And maybe the populace has a different idea than what I believe is appropriate, not appropriate, certainly open to listening to criticism on that. But you will not convince me that the token promotion business is a good business for the future of crypto, and there are some things that are a little more dicey like a web 3 game.

That also has a token you get sponsored by the game. I think thats, probably okay, as long as you dont, even reference the token. The token shouldnt come into the conversation, because if someone is trying to promote a token so aware in the chain of command from the founder of the project, all the way down to the team to the marketers to the influencers themselves, someone along that line is going To look to cash out and take advantage of the price speculation of the investors that watch the video and while everybody knows we dont give Financial advice. We just tell you what we do. People see our track records of success and they want to imitate that. So lets end the justification and the rationalization and lets use this as the aha moment in crypto, where everybody took a step back and said. Yeah thats actually right lets all stop doing this and we start seeing the Predators for who they are so from this point forward. We will be monetizing this Channel and we will be doing things that we deem appropriate sponsorships appropriate Partnerships, but I can promise you youll. Never see a token or coin promoted on this channel again in a paid fashion. We may do interviews or do coin reviews on projects, and people might consider that promotion, because we give a certain project press but its not in return for money its because we find Value in that thing, its the exchange of money or investment opportunities.

That makes it wrong so drop comments down below. Let me know what you think share this with your favorite influencer get their opinion. Lets have a conversation in the comments and lets get this thing figured out because the list of hard nodes, we think, is pretty clear, but the list of whats allowed well. There might be a lot of different varying opinions on that so hit the like on this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCGjLfAH7jQ