YouTube, Twitter and Medium are filled with influencers pushing out crypto content. It might seem that they have your best interest in mind, but trust me, they don’t. They promote sponsored content and share referral links with one goal in mind: to make money.

An unfair advantage

So is the desire to make money on their content a bad thing?

If they truly believe in a project and are willing to invest under the same conditions as their followers, it’s perfectly fine. By same conditions I mean:

• Investing their own money

• Participating in a public sale

Keep in mind though that influencers often have an unfair advantage.

They are often able to invest during presale, which enables them to get in at a price that is well below the opening price of the public sale. In some cases they even receive free tokens in exchange for promoting a project.

When things go south

Another thing to keep in mind is that influencers take no responsibility when things go south. Recently I watched a YouTube video by Your Friend Andy, in which he did a paid promotion for a project named Xodus Finance. Less than a day later, the project rugged during presale and stole 300K.

Although Andy is not to blame for the rug pull, he made money off the project, while followers that decided to invest based on his video lost all their money.

Content creation vs promotion

So does this mean an influencer cannot create content about a project unless he invests in it? Of course not. I’ve written multiple articles about projects that I didn’t invest in, or did invest in, but would not recommend to my followers.

It becomes unethical once an influencer tries to persuade someone to invest in a project for his own personal gain.

The question I always ask myself is: Would I recommend a friend of mine to invest in this project? If the answer is no, I will not recommend it to you either and I also will not share a referral link.

Conclusion

Truth be told; it’s easy for me to say what is good and what is wrong. I’m not an influencer and don’t get any offers to do paid promotions. Doing the right thing is a lot more difficult when there’s an opportunity to make a quick buck.

What I want you to take away from this article is to never blindly put your faith in an influencer. Influencers are often two steps ahead of you and by the time you make your investment, they may already have made 5–10x on their investment.

That’s why it’s important to always do your own research and to invest solely in projects that you believe in.

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