Beware of Crypto Shillers on YouTube

First posted on https://www.publish0x.com/a-foray-into-crypto-a-technophobes-journey/crypto-and-youtube-xjdxwmn

Good morning/evening
 
I am writing today about crypto YouTubers.
 
I have seen many posts of late where people have blindly followed a YouTube crypto shiller and got rekt, even to the point where no lessons were learnt and although the said person stopped following that shiller, they actually went on to do the same thing with another with unsurprisingly exactly the same outcome!
 
I know a lot of us have done it, I did it myself a long time ago but I learnt really quickly that was not the way, lost a very small amount of money and was even quick enough at times to profit from it. BUT I learned. Just a quick google search gives you pages and pages of crypto youtubers.
 
 
Now I am not saying all YouTubers are bad, they are not and I do follow a few. Some are informative, some are even educational and some are just painful to watch but most of them are not there 'to guide you' on your crypto journey. They are not your friend or your buy signal.
 
How do I know this?
 
Wallet tracking.

I learnt how to track wallets (not an expert by the way, just some basics!) I started off just looking at top wallets of certain tokens I hold to see what else they have, not to blindly follow them either! But to find some common denominators of people that get into a great token really early, how long they held and what else they had. Then I would research some of those tokens. 
I found this strangely enough, quite intrusive, like it was something I should not be doing, even though that is part of the transparency of blockchain and crypto.
 
More to the point I have a few shiller wallets in my watch list, I then had to watch a few video's and compare that information they are talking about to what they are actually doing with their wallet. It was quite an eye opener to say the least. Some would shill on their devoted followers, let them buy and then sell immediately as the price pumps. A lot of these shillers obviously switched wallets, transferred to different wallets and even had decoy wallets once they realised people were following them.
 
 
I did buy one token really early from wallet tracking and that was MUBI (what is Multibit?)lol. I have more than made profits from this token and still hold a small bag. Again this was just me experimenting in different areas of crypto. I try different things to find out if it is something I want to do or find interesting. There is always something new to learn in crypto.
 
Now the wallet tracking thing is a whole beast in itself IMO and it is not something I do very often now as it can easily become quite obsessive, it can take a whole lot of time as one thing leads to another and so on and the next thing you know is it has been days and you know who holds what and how much of this token or that token but that does not necessarily mean the token is good, you still would need to research that token too.
 
Picture from https://www.arkhamintelligence.com/
 
 
Well, I collated a lot of this information on many spreadsheets, with many notes and although at the time I did not always understand the significance of all the data I had, then that token would pop up on one youtubers channel and then another and I would go 'ah' that was the token I was looking at. But as I said before I did not buy anything else from all this wallet tracking, mainly because I was quite happy with my portfolio then and did not 100% trust I knew what I was doing or understood the data I had. (If I choose to do this more often, I would do a lot more checking to make sure I understand)
 
This takes me back to the whole youtube thing. I watch them now in a different light, I may look at their charts but even charts can be portrayed to look how you want them too. I may listen to them about what they are suggesting is the next big thing, but it does not mean I rush to buy it. I try to watch a varied selection, but watching and blindly following are two different things.
 
Conclusion
As with everything in crypto, you have to research and take time to learn. Blindly following is not the way, there is no easy option unless you want to throw money away. Even after many hours of research you can still pick a 'bad one' but the chances of doing that are much lower. Good luck out there and stay informed without being shilled.
 
 
I would love to know your thoughts on crypto youtubers, do you watch any? There may be some really good ones, let me know in the comments.
 
As always, thank you for reading.

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