Many of the YouTubers I’ve subscribed to have the following lifecycle:
- Their content begins with business or finance related ideas for the everyman.
- Ideas begin to become more risky & interesting as the channel grows thanks to financial security.
- They dabble in crypto for one video.
- The crypto video performs well, so they do more. It will likely become a regular theme for videos.
- Eventually they invest in a crypto project which needs traction to make them a return on investment.
- They then promote said project to inflate the value.
& that’s how YouTubers who document interesting business & finance content become yet another crypto influencer. Transforming them from relatable individuals, to sounding like GaryVee’s echo.
One which recently annoyed me in particular was Jesse Eckel.
Jesse Eckel is a YouTuber who became popular through documenting trying to make $1m in 1 year. Inevitably he began doing crypto, & that’s become the primary focus of his content.
The YouTuber recently invested in an NFT project, & found that nobody else was interested in investing which resulted in his collectibles not gaining value. The YouTuber then decided to promote the NFT via his social media, giving the project enough traction for it to grow, & his investment was saved.
This was naughty because he essentially got his audience to invest in something which – whilst low risk to him – could lose them a relatively considerable amount of money.
Since then Jesse has announced his new venture, which is a business that helps crypto projects have a stamp of trustworthiness.
My problem isn’t that Jesse is making a crypto company & I don’t like crypto, it’s that crytpo is the most boring idea an influencer can do.
Crypto projects increase in value when you inject two things into them:
- An audience
- Large amounts of money
& guess what influencers have plenty of?
It’s lazy & uninteresting as you know the outcome will be good for the YouTuber. If their money doesn’t increase the value of the project, they can always use their audience to give the project a push.
Predictable outcomes make for boring content.
An interesting theme I’ve noticed with these YouTubers is that when they post full videos about crypto the comments are overwhelmingly positive, whereas when they post a YouTube short about the subject the comments are often negative.
I don’t want to say something dodgy is happening… But it wouldn’t surprise me if someone is creating fake traffic & comments to encourage YouTubers to share crypto related content. A concept that controversial YouTuber TechLead has suggested to be true.
SIR THORNEY 