 Welcome to Digital Asset News, the top stories in cryptocurrency digital assets and big amount of bite-sized pieces. So today we really know what the news is, what's going on with the crypto market on a big deal. I want to talk to you about shills and who really could potentially be the king of all shills. And I want to just take a step back and talk about a video that I did a little bit ago. I think this was on March 24th or 23rd, where I talked about how Ethereum is a dumpster fire right now. And here's why. And it wasn't just me saying it, it was actually Charles Hoskinson from Cardano. And of course, people will say, well, he's very biased. True, of course he is, right? He's going to talk about Ethereum and maybe not such in a positive light. But he did call out some really good aspects of it, one of those being fees. I think we can all agree on that, fees kind of suck. So when I was doing this, and after I did the actual video, I always get the comments. I love to read the comments, always entertaining. Some are lighthearted. Some are pretty harsh. And most are just in the middle, pretty positive and whatnot. But this one was interesting. It was from Tony and she says, but the Ethereum Berlin update on April 14th study, and then make a video. Why are you bashing Ethereum? I don't get it. Is it to fill your Cardano bags as you shill Ada unsubscribe? Sorry, dude. Well, I can't really help that. A lot of people unsubscribe from me every day. And that's just how it is. You can't please everybody. That's just how it goes. So I really had to think about this. I'm like, what does it really mean to be a shill? Because when I got into this space, shill was like the worst word of all time. It was like, you are shill. And then of course, people would say, yeah, you're a shill, you're a shill. And over time, it's taken on different meanings, I think. And it forced me to take a look at what really is a shill and what would somebody consider it. And first of all, before we move on, the only bad part that I talked about as far as with Ethereum in that video, you can watch it, I'll link at the very end, was I talked about the fees were ridiculous. And I mean, I can't see anybody else who doesn't say that. So when people start to say, well, oh, how can you say something negative about Ethereum? It's because they got problems. I don't owe them anything. They don't owe me anything. So if I see a problem with it, and I as a consumer should call that out, right? Nobody gets a pass, not even on this show. I mean, I talk about Voyager all day long. But when Steve came on, the CEO, he doesn't get a pass. I asked him, what are you doing? What's going on? How are you not fixing these things? And of course, gave answers and off we go. So nobody gets a free pass. And if I'm going to talk about Ethereum, I'll talk about Ethereum. So it was just that part. So what I want to talk just really go deep into is just talk about, first of all, what is a shill? Things to avoid as far as shilling and why being a shill, depending on what you're doing, is actually not a bad thing. It just depends on what the actual motives are. So let's get into it. So first up, you have to take a look at the definition. Okay. So this is from Wikipedia. And Wikipedia, and even the article that says, hey, this has got multiple issues, we really need to revise this. But it was the best information, some of the best information I could find as far as this one and Webster. So I'm going to go with this one first. And this is the most negative part as far as a shill goes. A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing they have close relationship with the person or organization. So that's the big key right there. Without disclosing that they have a close relationship with the person. And then moving on, it says shilling is illegal in many circumstances and in many jurisdictions because of the potential for fraud and damage. And I think that is the big thing right there. So first of all, if you're talking about something, and you don't believe in it, you're just saying, hey, this tomato coin is fantastic. It's going to put marinara sauce on the blockchain and Olive Garden is going to sponsor it. It's going to be fantastic. And you have no belief in it whatsoever. And you're just saying that because Olive Garden paid you 20,000 Bitcoin or whatever. It doesn't matter. So in that situation, that's very dishonest and that could lead people down a road that they really shouldn't go down. Now, again, this entire channel is not for financial advice and not a financial planner, but some people will say, hey, if you're going to talk about something, at least believe in it. And I think at the core of it, I think we can all agree that is probably the best type of thing. So everything that we talk about here, we really do believe in too. But that is just the very first part. The second part is that if you're talking about a project that is just trash, and it leads down to people like ruination, like a BitConnect, for example, right? I think some people didn't know BitConnect was a scam. I think some people did. And I think even though they still promoted it because they got paid for it, that's the worst, right? You get paid for something that you don't believe in. People get wrecked. And then that is the worst part of being a shill. The other part is you think it's okay, you get paid for it, and then people get wrecked. That's the worst. That's the second worst. But still, when people get wrecked, that is the big thing. So as you notice on this channel, we don't really talk about too many new things. We talk about what's going on in development. We cover the news. I'm not real big into jumping on to the next big alt and the next $10,000 coin because that's where people get hurt, and I just can't do that. So anyhow, there's that part as far as what Wikipedia is talking about. But this one, I think is a better example. A shill is a person that acts as a spokesperson or promoter. You're shilling this. You're shilling that. Or a person who makes a sales pitch or serves a promoter. So on this channel, you'll notice that I talk about the same things over and over again. I talk about a Bitcoin. I talk about a Ethereum. I talk about a Voyager. I talk about a Celsius. I talk about a Polkadot. And I cover those things. And I make no bones about it. It's just what we talk about. I think there's a big difference between a shill who is promoting like you're shilling a product. You're talking about a product, and that's it. As defined by Webster, if we want to go down even here, I think this is a better reasoning or rationale, is a puppet. And this one they call about a puppet government. And a puppet, this is how I see people. If you are just taking money and you have no recourse or you have no belief in the project and you're just like, give me $10,000. And I will take that project and I will talk to all my people and I will shill or I will puppet it as much as I possibly can. And then people, they win, they win, they don't, they don't. That I think is like being called a puppet. Because the person that is making you talk has their hand up inside you and they're making you just move your mouth and only because of money. And I think those are the ones that, that is like the worst of all worst, right? So I, am I going to distinguish things between a shill and a puppet? A shill to me is somebody who's like just shilling a product and putting these in this information out. So here's an example of like shilling, right? This is an article from Decrypt. And again, it's been used in different various ways. Shill metal jacket. Who are the link marines? And they talk about how the link marines are shills. And of course, if you're a link marine, you really do believe in that, that chain link is going to go do pretty well. You believe in the technology and you're just, you know, in there, the majority. Now some people might be, might be, I don't know, some whales that are manipulating these types of things. But this article, you know, if you didn't know the, the difference, you'd be like, oh, so these, these people are getting paid to, to push a chain link. And it was a big article about Zeus capital and things like that. But the, the people that are on Twitter that I see, those are the people that just believe in the product itself and they're shilling their product and they are very passionate about it. So there is that part. And then just so you know, like, when we're talking about these different types of things, as far as like, you know, who, how do you know if somebody is shilling a product and being paid and not? Well, for me, and all YouTubers, and they should all be doing this, is that if they don't click this box right here, where it says my video contains a paid promotion, like a product placement, sponsorship or endorsement, and something gets found out that they got paid for it, their whole channel goes away. So again, for me, it only makes sense just if you have a good product and you want to put it out there, just do the right things and everything kind of falls in place. If the people that screw up and just be like, you know what, I'm just going to cheat the system, game the system, those are the ones that usually get screwed over. And that's how it all goes with all businesses I've ever been involved in. So that's the big thing. So you may have noticed that on this video, there was a little box that says this video contains a paid promotion, because if I have a promotion, I'm going to tell you about it. So I'm going to tell you about this great product that I've been using for the last two years, CryptoTrader.Tax. And I personally use it. I used it last year, and from the time that I opened it up to the time that I filled everything out, so my CPA took me 30 minutes. Now, this one took a little bit longer because I was waiting for some different things. Expressly Voyager, trying to get my CSV file, which I had to put in there, put it on my CPA, everything's done. Bing bang boom. So like if you want to save time and money, definitely look CryptoTrader.Tax. There's a link in the description. Also, there's a link to this web page where you pull out your first name and email. They will draw it for an unlimited tax report worth $300. So if you want to try to get one free one, that's the way. Or if you wanted to sign up for 20% off, use the link in the description. So that is how that works. So if somebody is paying me, CryptoTrader is paying me to talk about them, which I don't know why, because I mean, this is between me and you, I would talk about them anyhow, but they still pay me. So I'm like, sure, I'll talk about you as much as possible. And that is really a shill, doing a paid promotion, shilling their products, talking about their products. The difference is, is that I'm not here talking about Tomato Coin. They gave me $10,000. I don't tell you that they gave me any money. And I just talk to you and you get dumped on. That's not going to happen. It just, or some people will do that. And again, to reiterate, I am biased. I am super biased. So I know like some people say, oh, you know, I don't have any, any, any money in that shucks. Ah, sure. Well, I'm biased. So everything that I talk about on this channel looks like this. So if you see me talking about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Chainlink, Cardano, Theta, XRP, Stellar, Polkadot, Tesla, Veaching, etc. It's because I own it. And that's the truth. And I make no bones about it. Like in my January 7 price prediction, I talked about all of them, right? And then, so just so for full transparency, I have bought a couple new ones. And my portfolio has actually looked a little bit different now because of the price action that is going on. So Bitcoin's still up there. I mean, Bitcoin's still going to be the number one, I think, for quite some time. And then Cardano flipped Ethereum. Cardano, when I was buying it, it was like 18, 28 cents. And all of a sudden it went to like $1.40. So of course it's going to be above Ethereum. And Ethereum and Theta, same product I've been talking about. But that went from like, I was buying it at like less than 50 cents. And then all of a sudden it went to like $13. So hey, there it goes. Then Polkadots and Chainlink and BAT for some reason, basically then your token just blew up. There was some kind of partnership that was just announced and it could be very big. And the next one, and then all the ones underneath here, because if you notice like, we're looking at, well, this is like 44% Cardano, Ethereum are like 12 and 11%, Theta's about 10, 9, 7, something like that. Everything from like StormEx down is like 1.5% or less. So StormEx, VeChain, Uniswap, Stellar, Celsius, Aave, Engine, and then some others like XRP and all the different ones. So that is my portfolio. So just so you know, if I talk about them, it's because I own them. And that is the truth. VeChain actually did pretty great. I bought it. Alex Massioli from Alex Massioli's channel was talking about this for like a month. And I was like, sure, yeah, I'll look into it. Never did. Then we did a Trinity Trading video. And it came out like super high on the sentiment. So I bought a little bit and I did some research and I bought a good amount afterwards. And it went up. Now it's gone down. I think I really, I need to really do this. I think StormEx is probably below, right around Aave and Engine right now, but whatever. So that's pretty much my portfolio and that's what's going on. And then I will just say this. And that is that I'm not always right. I don't always, you know, get it correct. But on this channel, I don't like to, you know, like tell you like, hey, this is this project going to go up forever. And you got to get into this now. And, and you just got to trust me. And it's going to be just this fantastic thing and 30,000. I just don't. So like when I talk about the negative things, I know people don't want to hear it. But that is what it is. And then sometimes when I go against my own thinking, like I did here, like yesterday, today is, was it 25th of March? Yesterday, it just came out that Tesla is going to accept payments for Bitcoin to buy their, their, their Tesla products. And I was like, Hey, this is, this should be good news for Bitcoin and everything else. And of course, what happened was not Bitcoin going from 56 to 50k. But yeah, and then a tweet before that, I talked about how Bitcoin is going to 50k and people attacked because they're like, how dare you talk negative about Bitcoin? But I have to, because if I don't give you something balanced, what's the whole point of me? You just come into my show or the channel and like, Oh, I know what Rob's going to talk about. He's going to tell me that Bitcoin is going to the moon. I think I'm going to go up forever. All his picks are going to be awesome. And he's going to show me some, you know, crazy stuff or puppet me some other stuff. And that's not the whole point. The whole point is to make you just informed and a better investor, again, not financial advice. So again, the big thing is that, you know, there's a lot of, if you want to find positive news on YouTube, there's a plethora of moon boys and moon girls out there. All you got to do is look for their thumbnail, look something like that. And you'll find them. I just, I just don't do that. And just so you know, everything that I'm talking about, like I'm shilling every day I'm talking about Bitcoin. I'm shilling Bitcoin. I'm promoting, I'm promoting Ethereum, Cardano, VeChain, well, or Voyager, Celsius, all the other things I talk about, I'm shilling and I'm talking about it. I'm promoting it because I own it. And I'm not a trader. I trade like three to 5% of my portfolio, but mostly I'm just an investor. I'm just a buy and hold guy. And like my friend Mullet says, and actually my friend CJ says, he goes, Hey, man, you got to take some profit at some point. I'm like, I'll get there. I have an exit strategy. I just don't do it as much as you guys do it. But I'm mostly just a buy and hold. And then on top of that, I not only do I, you know, chill about this, I have other products. VanTeachesCrypto.com, the one that's swinging up here. It's 100% free website. It teaches everything. Well, most things you want to know about cryptocurrency assets. And that's why I have it. On top of that, you know, I talk about the stake pool, a couple of trader.tags, trade the chain. I trust capital, great place for your IRA. I've been using that also. I've actually maxed out. So I'm maxed out my Roth IRA. And then like the stone book in Kiva, which is I even show Kiva. Kiva is a place to do micro loans for the underprivileged and unbanked. And actually for our DNews Cardano stake pool, every epic, which that's what Charles Hoskinson calls it, please don't tell me in the comments that it's pronounced at epoch. I don't care. Every epic, every five days, we give 100 ADA. We make a loan to Kiva for the underprivileged. So all these things that I'm talking about, these are all the things that I shill. And that is it. So really, it just comes out of this. If you're going to talk about who is the king of the shill on YouTube, it's me. I shill as much or as hard as the rest of them. It's just that I think that some of these products are things that you are probably interested in or would actually use, like a Bitcoin, like an Ethereum, like an I trust, like a crypto tax, like maybe getting into helping out with micro loans. So look, that is it. There's a big difference between, I would say like a shill on a promoter and somebody who's just a puppet who is out there who is just like, I have no care in the world. I'm just going to give you whatever these people pay me. I think there's very few of those people out there, quite honestly, but they are all out there. So again, take it with a grain of salt. This is not financial advice. Do your own research. Take a look at what I'm saying, you know, just a little bit, you know, sometimes I'm pretty goofy about the things I talk about. Take a look at some other smarter people and in the link or in the description of all my videos, I have all the different people that I listened to. You can start there and branch out and there's a lot of good advice or a lot of good information out there. So you can make the best choice for you and your family. All right, so that's it. So first of all, it may all the way the end. Thanks for sticking with me. If you found a value to that or at least a little entertainment, give it a thumbs up that helps the channel tremendously. Also consider subscribing to a lot of things we talk about our news. So it's very time sensitive and that is all for today. I'm also going to pop up two videos on your left and right so you can enjoy those and that is all. So thanks so much for watching. I appreciate it and I'll see you on the next one.