I Will (not) Make You Rich!
But I Might Save You Money
Fellow Steemian and friend @engineeringsteem was showing me a funny video takedown of some Youtube crypto “experts” yesterday, put together by new-to-steem-but-not-Youtube @dougpolkcrypto, and I got pulled into watching a few more of his hilarious takedowns of some of the biggest bitconnect shills online.
If I start doing non-ironic pictures like this, I recommend the UNFOLLOW and MUTE buttons.
I had no idea how bad the Youtube space was getting with countless teens and young twenty somethings shilling cryptocurrency with reckless abandon! 2017 really seems to be the year that a great deal of opportunists caught on to cryptocurrency. Most of my Youtube viewing is focused on projects and people in this space, not how to make YOU RICH in 2018!. And while I’ve been a bit vocal to friends and readers here about how many opportunities there are in cryptocurrency (now and for the next few years), I hope I have never come across as one who thinks, speaks, or acts this way.
So, it was time for a gut check. I did get paid in 2017 to write and vlog about some tokens. I was careful to always mention when I was being compensated for them, and careful also to avoid mentioning price movements or any sort of guarantees. But, I also want to ensure that any online work I do is as transparent as possible. I will never write about a project I don't trust.
2017's Shilling Revisited
For better transparency, these are the tokens I wrote about in 2017 and was compensated for:
PTOY-Patientory. I sold the last of my PTOY tokens in late November as my impression of the company was that it was spending more time attending conferences than developing a solid product. I earned PTOY in their bounty program, which I joined after buying into the pre sale. Patientory had a fairly radical change in team members in the late summer. Their CEO, Chrissa McFarlane, knows the space she is in well but I have my doubts that "blockchain" is the answer. I hope I'm wrong and wish them the best. US medicine certainly needs innovation and massive improvement.
WandX. I haven’t sold any WandX and think this company has a very good future ahead. The CEO, Abhi, is an Ironman Triathlete and their team is incredibly smart. I earned WandX after a member of the team reached out to me to write some articles about it on steemit. WandX has had a working beta for a few months now and their market cap is under $10 million.
Vezt. I joined the Vezt bounty program as a super advocate because I had worked with their marketing director, Michael, when he was at Patientory. I trust him. Vezt has a team that seems very comfortable in the music industry and has been hustling hard to get big names to sell some song royalties on their platform. I don’t love the big living hip hop lifestyle, and Vezt seems to be using this to help promote their platform. On the other hand, bringing royalties to retail investors is a good use of the blockchain, and gives more options to us. I intend to sell some of my Vezt (it is being released over 5 quarters, so I have an auto hodl built in).
I was also paid to write for FOAM, which will ICO this spring. I will get FOAM tokens then and intend them to be a long term hold as well. FOAM also has a great team and they have taken a very careful approach to entering the ICO markets.
Rejected Offers
I turned down one request by a project which seemed scammy to me. I don't take offers from anonymous people on the internet. I turned down another project as I didn’t feel like their token model made sense: they were adding complexity to a system that didn’t need it, and simply jumping on the ICO bandwagon. If you're an investor in this space, you really need to know when a token is doing this sort of thing.
Forward
While I do intend to hold most of the above tokens, life changes can create the need for short term liquidity, and I will sell some if I need to pay bills. If anything I “promote” ever was revealed to be evil or a scam, I will write on here when I have some degree of certainty, but I dislike the overuse of the word “scam”.
The pervasive nature of these hype machines only further underscores the need for my soon to be released eBook. More details to follow...but it won't tell you how to make 1000%!
-Jeff
Just like the make a million with only $1000 post. It is pretty ridiculous and glad @dougpolkcrypto exposes them in a humorous way. Transparency is good and thanks for showing that.
you have to know how to invest, do not get carried away by emotions, this is money and be realistic! @upvote
Yeah, the Youtube videos really prey on greed. That's why I like Doug Polk's stuff; he pops the balloon by having a good laugh about it.
Hey mate, just given you a follow your content seems pretty decent, I look forward to learning from my fellow steemit veterans haha. It's crazy how many crypto experts out there... can't believe so many people fell into the whole ponzi scheme trap :/
Cool, welcome to steemit!
There are a lot of "experts" out there; the real gains that people made in 2017 in crypto have deluded non-crypto folks into some real traps.
Hopefully I can help people avoid them.
With that picture in your post, I didn't read it, but I'm ready to invest where you tell me for 10000% gains. I skimmed, you did offer that right?
Haha, nailed it!
@protegeaa Hey, could you undelegate your SP to @ryacha21
He is leasing 30k SP from @minnowbooster then using that to VOTE Up his own 7 Day old comments on random posts at the last minute. Scroll his comments to around the 6 day mark or just go to https://steemd.com/@ryacha21; he has a lot of self love on his own old comments.
HE IS DOING IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER.. He is farming the pool.. If you could help it would be appreciated..
Learn more about this sack of monkey spunk here:
https://steemit.com/shitpost/@pawsdog/the-shit-post-diaries-1-17-18-4
Hmm, thanks for the heads up. I noticed his last day of votes have changed as he has lost a lot of his delegated steem. If it stays that way I will keep delegating, but if he keeps swooping in on his 6 day old comments I will revoke.
What branch you serve?
United States Marine Corps. I was a CWO3, USMC EOD.. He has changed his voting pattern in response to me commenting on each of his posts to alert other users of his abusive behavior. Prior to yesterday and me posting about his behavior based on one of my followers submissions he had hundreds of self votes for himself and would only wait until about 6 hours before they were due to pay and vote them up. What he is doing now is simply attempting to cover his trail. IMHO, getting caught and summarily trying to clog steemd with alternative behavior to his previously long established behavior as a bad actor and irresponsible holder of leased SP is not grounds for absolution. If you check his wallet a bunch others have also cancelled on him. If its the nominal income you are worried about, I'll lease it from you as I fight these tools on a daily basis and my voting record stands for itself. Thank you though for your response.
Thanks, no worries, just checked my records and I undelegated him a day or two ago-our contract was up.
I talked to a few others who are delegating to him and they're cutting ties as well.
Once I get some SP back I'll shoot you some upvotes for your work here. Thank you.
Did the EOD work prep you for the vicious price swings in crypto? ;-)
I was an Electronics Technician in the Navy.
Thanks again for being so responsive "shipmate".. Nah EOD did not really help out when it came to crypto lol.. nor in the civilian world unless I wanted to go back and work for the government as a GS or potentially blow up buildings as a civilian.
I worked with a ton of Navy dudes in EOD.. cool bunch really.. and we had a Corpsman always assigned to us as well.. another cool dude.. Marines love the Navy.. It's the Army dudes we think are shit bags...
Navy can be every bit as hardcore as the Marine Corps in some aspects.. A lot of the guys I went over seas with and worked in EOD with that were Navy I have the Utmost respect for..
This is nice