Some Influencers Are Not Helping

[Bitcoin_bullish]

This Dave Portnoy figure was completely unknown to me until he tweeted about Bitcoin. It was a strange video of him ranting about what Bitcoin is and if he could mine it on the internet with some plastic hammer he held or something similar, (I don't even remember what I saw, it wasn't significant anyway). The continuation was strange though as in his next video Portnoy was asking the Winklevoss twins to visit him and explain Bitcoin and how it works. At some point, it was obvious that the whole thing was a staged ad that included affiliate promotions to Portnoy's 1,7 million twitter followers.

Not only the Winklevoss twins failed to present a decent case for Bitcoin, but the next day they've also proceeded with asking him to promote Chainlink, a controversial shitcoin when it was right on the top of a bubble. So Portnoy told his followers to buy an ERC20 token that was at the top of the pump 'n dump phase. Was this all random and happened spontaneously out of the Winklevoss pure love for alternative cryptocurrencies? Why ask him to talk about LINK anyway? It is looking carefully planned as well.

Now I don't blame Portnoy for this, he does not care about Bitcoin or his followers. I care about how ridiculous crypto twitter has become, how terrible all of this was handled and that three years after the whole shitcoin bubble phase we haven't learned a thing.

There are people on twitter that have Bitcoin bags and just want to shill them. I get it. Honestly, I wish I also wasn't strict and went all-in in March instead of buying the dip but small. Some people make sense and then there are some that just because they bought a tonn of random altcoins they unleash thousands of paid shills to promote them. The moment people that used to be just about Bitcoin started shilling DeFi, Chainlink, Band, Compound, yield farming, etc. it becomes very disappointing.

Bitcoin is not taken seriously this way. Gemini lost a lot of points by shilling a shitcoin, Binance is not respected outside the crypto space and Coinbase is close to becoming Bittrex with the number of shitcoins they've added.

It is their business model but perhaps they should understand that they should stop harming Bitcoin by reducing it to the same level as alts. At least exchanges should pretend that they are following the rules. Pump 'n dumps are not the rules. The financial world is observing these mistakes that keep happening for years. The CEO's of cryptocurrency exchanges are major crypto influencers and should be very careful about promoting anything else besides Bitcoin unless they want to damage both Bitcoin and their businesses. The damage to Bitcoin won't be permanent though as we've learned from the case of Mt.Gox.

Most of us remember the phrase from Wolf of Wall Street: "Once we've suckered them in, we unload the dog shit". I thought that the whole community and especially exchanges were trying to call themselves financial institutions and escape the quick cash-grab logic. Is this really what they want?

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[TheCaliReign]

This is kind of a repeated cycle. An unfortunately it's self fulfilling and self perpetuating. "Pure" or altruistic supporters and projects of bitcoin, those that focus on utility and long term value are consistently tossed aside for those willing to just pimp garbage for fast profits. And sometimes those junk projects raise hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. That in turn brings in more fast talking, network marketing, garbage peddlers who wait for the next sign of a bull run to produce even greater numbers of garbage projects. Make great profits. Etc Etc. Rinse and repeat.

It seems like only in the bear days does the mass sentiment around bitcoin return to its white paper value roots.

Ugh, I'm too young to be this cynical about technology

-Cali

[TravelMug]

It's cyclical, remember John Mcafee? he was one of these so called crypto influencer and even commands $100k per tweet about shitcoins way back in 2017. And now maybe we don't hear from him anymore, but the rule of the game doesn't change. They are going to shill, that's their job.

And for us crypto enthusiast, we should be always be careful on who to follow, on who we believed, otherwise we are going to get REKT here. Let them shill whatever they want, it's really up to us, use our common sense and think many times before buying any shitcoins those influencers are promoting or advertising specially in Twitter.

[mk4]

The Winklevi are running an exchange; and since most people know about bitcoin already, I think it's safe to assume that they shilled an altcoin to let people gain more interest and potentially them gaining more users on Gemini.

And while this as a whole is quite unfortunate, these nonsense is only going to be a blip in the radar in the future as we know that there's a decent chance that these altcoins are going to be temporary.

[Darker45]

At the end of the day, all of this is purely money-making. So you don't put your full trust on these businessmen even if they appear to be siding with the revolutionary, with that which offers the biggest disruption to the traditional world.

I have to admit my crypto portfolio itself is also not all-Bitcoin. I am also trying to make use of stronger altcoins for the opportunity it gives me. Trading altcoins is one way of increasing my Bitcoin worth.

[TheCaliReign]

It's cyclical, remember John Mcafee? he was one of these so called crypto influencer and even commands $100k per tweet about shitcoins way back in 2017. And now maybe we don't hear from him anymore, but the rule of the game doesn't change. They are going to shill, that's their job.

And for us crypto enthusiast, we should be always be careful on who to follow, on who we believed, otherwise we are going to get REKT here. Let them shill whatever they want, it's really up to us, use our common sense and think many times before buying any shitcoins those influencers are promoting or advertising specially in Twitter.

And he didn't even eat his junk on TV. SMDH

I think we are entering into a new run in these kinds of projects. It's been cyclical since the days of Havelock. The ICO Boom. Security Boom. Now DeFi.

Same shit. Different day. I'll stick with bitcoin for sex work.

[Bitcoin_bullish]

Ugh, I'm too young to be this cynical about technology

All altcoin cryptocurrencies claim to be financial tech so being sceptikal is the correct approach. Buying them and hoping to pump is a gamble and I did that as well, but shilling the top of an altcoin because bags have to be unloaded is terrible approach and is also affecting Bitcoin's popularity. See how Portnoy for example talks about Bitcoin after his first experience (link).

[Bitcoin_bullish]

And while this as a whole is quite unfortunate, these nonsense is only going to be a blip in the radar in the future as we know that there's a decent chance that these altcoins are going to be temporary.

I hope so too but from what I'm observing altcoins are just there to stop Bitcoin all this time. Back in 2018 Bitcoin's dominance fell as low as 35% and the chart speaks for itself. It seems that all these nonsense are not going away easily. We have DeFi now and some influencers are calling holders to sell and wrap their Bitcoins in ERC20 tokens to profit from lending (which contains hidden risks of illiquidity and possible withdrawal problems). Altcoins already own a big part of the market and increasing it.  

[mk4]

I hope so too but from what I'm observing altcoins are just there to stop Bitcoin all this time. Back in 2018 Bitcoin's dominance fell as low as 35% and the chart speaks for itself. It seems that all these nonsense are not going away easily.

Never said they were going to go away easily. It's most likely going to be a long and painful process, and will consists of a lot more new altcoins.

We have DeFi now and some influencers are calling holders to sell and wrap their Bitcoins in ERC20 tokens to profit from lending (which contains hidden risks of illiquidity and possible withdrawal problems). Altcoins already own a big part of the market and increasing it.  

We've had this "DeFi" thing for years already, "DeFi" is just a new sort of "cool moniker" for Ethereum apps/projects to make it sound "cool". They ain't even decentralized, mostly just non-custodial.

[MainIbem]

It's cyclical, remember John Mcafee? he was one of these so called crypto influencer and even commands $100k per tweet about shitcoins way back in 2017. And now maybe we don't hear from him anymore, but the rule of the game doesn't change. They are going to shill, that's their job.

And for us crypto enthusiast, we should be always be careful on who to follow, on who we believed, otherwise we are going to get REKT here. Let them shill whatever they want, it's really up to us, use our common sense and think many times before buying any shitcoins those influencers are promoting or advertising specially in Twitter.

The way to survive is to carry out due diligence on any coin you want to invest. Most of the influencers are speculators. Remember too that McAfee predicted that BTC will hit an ATH of $100 in same 2017 and that if it fails, he will cut his D**K. Some who follow that prediction will have invested and lost.

[Twinkledoe]

It's cyclical, remember John Mcafee? he was one of these so called crypto influencer and even commands $100k per tweet about shitcoins way back in 2017. And now maybe we don't hear from him anymore, but the rule of the game doesn't change. They are going to shill, that's their job.

And for us crypto enthusiast, we should be always be careful on who to follow, on who we believed, otherwise we are going to get REKT here. Let them shill whatever they want, it's really up to us, use our common sense and think many times before buying any shitcoins those influencers are promoting or advertising specially in Twitter.

Bottomline, it is all about the money. I remember Mcafee very well because as far as I remember, I promoted some of the projects endorsed by him. At that time, he was some sort of big deal that if he endorsed a certain project, the ICO stage will attract users' attention. But right now, he becomes the laughing stock of the community. I don't think there are still blockchain projects paying him to endorse them.

So even if the influencer is well known and popular, most of them are just being paid and don't know what they are talking about. Better trust your own guts and your own research.

[Upgrade00]

[from what I'm observing altcoins are just there to stop Bitcoin all this time. Back in 2018 Bitcoin's dominance fell as low as 35% and the chart speaks for itself.

Market dominance is based off the market cap of the currency, and imo, that is not a very meaningful statistic, does not reflect growth, and I will not pay much attention to it. Any altcoin created today could easily pump up their volume and release unlimited number of coins, greatly increasing their market cap. When checking Bitcoin, I usually pay more attention to other metrics.

2017 into 2018 was the hype period for ICOs, the current rave is DeFi, there will be more hype projects in the future as more developers look for ways to tweak the system for benefits. This doesn't much hurt Bitcoin as a network, those that understand its value will get in and those who follow the hype of other projects could profit there or get burned, just like with ICOs back then.

[davis196]

Crypto Twitter is a toxic environment.You should stop paying attention to all the BS that's happening there.
All those "influencers" understand one thing.Most of the broke/desperate people fall into the "next shiny object" or "the next big thing" type of syndrome.Bitcoin is established for years and it's kinda boring now.You can't make 1000% profit overnight.With all those shitcoins/tokens it's different.The people have the expectation that the shitcoins/tokens will be the next big thing,therefore their price will explode and they will make 1000% profits overnight.ICOs,Chainlink,DeFi,etc... it doesn't matter.People just want another "shiny object".

[Bitcoin_bullish]

[from what I'm observing altcoins are just there to stop Bitcoin all this time. Back in 2018 Bitcoin's dominance fell as low as 35% and the chart speaks for itself.

This doesn't much hurt Bitcoin as a network, those that understand its value will get in and those who follow the hype of other projects could profit there or get burned, just like with ICOs back then.

The network won't have a problem, growth will have as all this money could have been invested in Bitcoin instead of blindly gambling them into ICOs. Three years after the ICO craze still no products and no utility by altcoins. There are a few that tried to create something unique but were doomed to fail as they were either not decentralized or secure as blockchains, or were just ERC20 tokens running on the Ethereum blockchain which is clogged for half the year since it was created.

[hatshepsut93]

I'm not too worried about Bitcoin, because I believe everyone understands the difference between Bitcoin and altcoins, even if it's subconsciously - Bitcoin is a proper open-source project, just like Linux, while altcoins are more like startups, and startups are very prone to failure, especially the unregulated ones. And with time this understanding will only grow stronger, especially as scams like Chainlink will get exposed, so maybe it's all a net good thing.

[pooya87]

first of all i hate the term influence specially when it is used for some idiot on twitter or similar platforms spreading bullshit. a better term is "idiots who have nothing better to do other than wasting time on the internet". and they don't influence anything either, they just have some sheep that falls into their trap and loses money once and goes away with a sour lesson.

and they are helping. they are teaching the newcomers 2 very valuable lessons. first is that they should never listen to these idiots on the internet and second is that altcoins are going to get dumped on them no matter what so they should stay away.

[DoubleEdgeEX]

Dave Portnoy could be glad that he is already rich! He should stick to his dayjob, whatever that is. To me it seemed he got triggerd by greed and that the Winklevosses implanted in his brain. However, a perfect example that education in trading is crucial to success and just randomly putting money in and out of an asset just ruins your bank account. Now he sounds like spoiled brat that someone took his lolly from.

I always prefered to listent Mike Portnoy. Are they somehow related?

Here a nice summary: https://www.coindesk.com/barstool-dave-portnoy-trading-cryptocurrency-bitcoin

[Upgrade00]

The network won't have a problem, growth will have as all this money could have been invested in Bitcoin instead of blindly gambling them into ICOs.

There's no guarantee that the money which was pumped into ICOs would have been invested in Bitcoin, if ICOs didn't exist. Some people were out for a quick buck and preferred gambling with different altcoins which only offered hype in the hope that one would give them a decent ROI quickly, rather than trusting the underlying technology of Bitcoin.

Competition exists in different markets and is actually necessary for stability. Altcoins may pump up and die off subsequently, but there would always be more which are created over time, so bitcoin's dominance would always be tested, the fact that it has survived through all the previous hype/dump periods suggests that it is reliable

[Bitcoin_bullish]

first of all i hate the term influence specially when it is used for some idiot on twitter or similar platforms spreading bullshit. a better term is "idiots who have nothing better to do other than wasting time on the internet". and they don't influence anything either, they just have some sheep that falls into their trap and loses money once and goes away with a sour lesson.

and they are helping. they are teaching the newcomers 2 very valuable lessons. first is that they should never listen to these idiots on the internet and second is that altcoins are going to get dumped on them no matter what so they should stay away.

The term is awful on its own. As a beginner I was lucky there weren't many of these guys around, although when they appeared I did mistakes too. I stopped listening after a while and saved both money and valuable time.

[Thavash]

To be honest , here's what we need to get rid of for Bitcoin to truly be taken seriously by normal people and become the global currency :
1) An end to crazy influencers like you've mentioned
2) An end to scams that make the news ( further making normal people to question Bitcoin )
3) An end to the meme culture where, once again , normal people see these "moon" memes and others and just think of Bitcoin as a joke
4) An end to crypto infighting - an example is the Eth crowd and Bitcoin maxis constantly going at each other on Twitter etc - this hurts crypto in general. I'm not saying don't debate technology - thats important , but when its meme vs meme , its a joke...