Crypto Youtubers Influence Bitcoin : Interview with Lark Davis (All Interviews)

Lark Davis

Interview Date :15th April 2020

Lark Davis (All Interviews)

Bitcoin to the Moon. Woohoo!

How is it going! My name is Lark Davis and I am a Crypto Youtuber with over 115000 subscribers. I got “very” creative when creative when creating my youtube name and so ended up with “The Crypto Lark”.

I have been making youtube videos for years now. I have also made a youtube beginners crypto course for those who need to get the basic right. I made this to help people come into the crypto space. Even though I have been making these videos for years, I have been trying to keep the videos in a way that if somebody showed up today, that person can still get some information and understand whats happening.

Lark Davis

Back in the day, we had STEEM!

In the beginning, I started of with STEEM. That was the first place where I started interacting more with the cryptocurrency community, buying bitcoin, and also earning on STEEM for posting on the STEEM platform. That kind of hooked me in. I was posting about things like travel stories or review of places I had been to. Then I started posting about bitcoin, because I was also excited about bitcoin. At that time,I was also investing in bitcoin. After a short while people started asking questions, and so they would ask things like “well, what do you think about this aspect of bitcoin?” I would reply by making another post on STEEM in order to answer them. Eventually I realized I have been spending a lot of time writing these posts. So, in order to do better time-wise, instead of writing more posts, I just started making videos that would be way quicker. I remember I recorded my first video, uploaded it on youtube, and then posted it on STEEM. Well, youtube become more popular very quickly and I didn’t really post on STEEM anymore. I haven’t used STEEM on a long time, but it was what got me into the cryptocurrency community and into content creation.

Change in Youtubers over the years

I started my crypto career as a content creator in 2017. At that time, there were a few of the bigger channels that we see nowadays, and some others came a little later on in 2018~2019. People like Ivan on Tech or DataDash started around a similar as me. Now, there have been a few big crypto channels before that, but not many of them are creating content now. A couple of them, like Davincij15 for instance, has been around for some years and still is making content, so that’s pretty cool. Most of the people who were making content 5 years ago are not making content anymore, and even if they would be, they are definitely not making content regularly anymore.

Why that has become is due to they maybe just made too many millions of dollars in 2017, and they are living in an island in the Caribbean. Who knows? Everyone has got their reasons make and not make content. Making content it is a full-time gig. You really have to be engaging with the community, and make interesting content. Obviously, you are also putting yourself out there for criticism, so some people might just prefer live the quieter live.

Crypto Community people are Critical thinkers

I also have absolutely received criticism. There is criticisms everyday; your opinions, comments etc. For me, if it’s good faith-criticism or somebody wants to have a debate on ideas, that is always very welcome. However, once in a while, there definitely is a no-coiner who will come to my comment section, and say something like “ bitcoin is all a big scam”. you cannot escape them. There will always be those people on the internet. Nevertheless, most people in the cryptocurrency community are very passionate and excited people, and also are critical thinkers open to new ideas. They are into saving and solving money problems, so it’s really an uplifting and encouraging community to be a part of.

Crypto Youtubers Influence Bitcoin Price

Cryptocurrency YouTubers do have an influence on the price of bitcoin, however I believe that it depends on how engaged the community is. It can be quite a significant influence, especially if we start taking about smaller market cap coins. For instance, so if you are a crypto Youtuber with a large audience, and you start promoting a smaller market cap coin, there is a chance that the price of the coin actually might move because the volumes are quite small. Likewise, companies who are looking to do fundraising can see investments return from having content creators promote their products. So there definitely is influence there.

I really like to focus on educating, so I never tell people to “go out and buy this” or “ go out and trade this way”. I just try to express my opinion; this is what I am thinking and this is where my mind is at this moment!” People really have to make their own decision. Unfortunate, the reality is that it is the internet, and there will be those people who see a thumbnail, and that’s how they trade based on it. They don’t watch the video and don’t even what to listen to anything you have to say! There will always be a certain percent of those people who don’t do their own due diligence and research; they just jump at the first thing they see. That’s unfortunate because most of the cryptocurrency community are talented people who critically think and examine things. I think that coming to crypto youtube or crypto twitter, it’s just a great place to discuss and exchange ideas, get news, but it shouldn’t be your personal and financial adviser.

Youtube Crypto Community is Huge!

The crypto community on Youtube is absolutely huge! It is hard to say how big, but I have 115000 subscribers which is cool, but there is at least a million people go to youtube and get some variety of cryptocurrency related content as there is a lot of different potential content. I focus more on news and a little about trading as well, but then there are channels that focus just on news, just on trading, or just reviews so they appeal to different audiences. Different content creators will also appeal to different audiences. I am a character, and I am a bit weird and that’s OK! I just try to be me but I may not be for everybody. Maybe somebody who thinks “this guy is a bit too weird for me”, maybe that person likes DataDash more because he is a bit more serious and he also has great content. You also have a great choice of content as a consumer on youtube from many of different perspectives, different points of views, personalities and focuses. So, you are really spoiled as somebody who is watching on youtube as you have got lots of great options out there.

People I admire inside and outside of Youtube

It is interesting because I don’t watch many cryptocurrency youtube videos. It may sound kind of funny because I do it myself, but I don’t watch them partially for the reason that I don’t want to get influenced by other people’s contents, I want my ideas to be fresh and kind of coming from me. There are a lot of guys that I do respect and that makes fantastic content like Crypto Zombie, Carl from The Moon, Nugget’s News. These all are great channels with fantastic information. They all have their unique way of presenting information and news while encouraging their communities.

Outside of Youtube, I do look up to the classical investor types. People like Ray Dalio, Tony Robbins are real inspirations to me as they are people kind of get that big picture. Sometimes they don’t do Bitcoin like Ray Dalio for example. He is a very famous investor and I have a lot of respect for him as an investor, but he is not into Bitcoin. He doesn’t have anything against it, but he is not in it either, but that’s OK. On the other end, we have other people like Tony Robbins who is into Bitcoin. Gary Vaynerchuk has also been an inspiration for me in terms of building my content and my channel, and he is also into Bitcoin which is cool.

Price Speculation

The viewers from the crypto community on youtube are most likely there mainly for the price and price volatility, but not necessarily for the technology behind it. Certainly, there are a lot of people who are focused on the speculation of the price, and they want to know if the price is going to go up or down. That is a major focus for many channels and for a lot of people who are watching the content. Nevertheless, there are a lot of people who are also interested in the bigger picture like industry news, conversations about technology, etc. but the reality that we need to face as a cryptocurrency community is that most people are here for speculation and not for the technology. The speculators might stay around for the technology, but they did not come for the financial revolution. Many of them come to trade Bitcoin, they see it as an asset that can be very volatile, provide a lot of gains and that is what the speculators are here for.

Value and Relevance for the Community

The most important thing for me is to provide value for my community. I think that is the number 1 thing that I focus on. I constantly think of how I can give unique insights and value to people. I think people like Crypto Zombie or Carl from The Moon have also got great price analysis videos and people are excited to see those videos. I do price analysis videos too, but it’s not the main bulk of my content. However, people are excited to know what’s happened to the price of Bitcoin, why, and what will be next. So there is a lot of excitement.

2017 was crazy, but it’s funny because when I look back, sometimes I think “that was terrible content that I did back then”. I did not have a good microphone, videos, and cameras. I hope the videos were useful for a lot of people though. You just have to stay there throughout the market; bear market or bull market. As a content creator, I know some content creators who just disappear during bear markets and they come back when the bull markets are back. However, I think it’s important to be there for the community for the people who allow me to be able to do what I do. I want to be there for them when times are tough. When we see the markets going down, and many become very anxious. I want to provide emotional support and let people know that I still care, I still want to be here even if things are happening or the price is down. I still deliver that value and content to the people.

Inspiration for my Crypto Videos

The inspiration for making any given video is that I want to obtain relevance; what’s going on in the markets. At the same time, I want to talk about what I am interested in and excited about as a content creator while giving value to the audience. Recently, I made a video about Ethereum and the future of Ethereum. I went over things like “ Can Ethereum ever have a 3 trillion dollar market cap” etc. It is really fun to make these speculative videos sometimes. Those kinds of videos allow me to go back over the reasons and to refresh myself. Moreover, it also becomes a space for people who may not have the time to research like I can spend time and put all the pieces together to give the people the content and perspective on things. It is a bit of “keeping-up-to-date” with the news. My research and my views on what goes in the news are also included. Furthermore, I also include what I think is relevant to the audience and what will give value to people listening.

How I decide what is important is what I really think is relevant, and what is going to make an impact in terms of the effect in the market or the technology. You might see all kinds of news stories in the news or on the internet. for example something like “a little partnership deal“ or “somebody hired somebody” “this investor invested here” that stuff isn’t really important. I mean it may be important to somebody, but for most people watching I don’t think that it would appeal to them as important. If I am sitting down watching a video, what would I want to hear about? what do I think would be something that is important and that I need to know about; macro picture on politics, new technological development, talking to industry leaders and other content creators, sharing opinions and ideas, and having that type of back-and-forth discussion with people is part of it. In terms of differentiating myself from other content creators, my focus is a little bit more on the macro-political picture, understanding the work of the economical system and looking at that why all of this is so important anyway, why cryptocurrencies even matters, and of course trying to have some fun is always good too.

Another Potential Massive Dip in Price

What could cause another massive dip in the price of Bitcoin is the fact that the corona crisis is not finished, and there is a possibility that another pandemic or natural crisis could occur. The current pandemic crisis could get much worse moving forward as well. We haven’t seen the full extent of the effects of this crisis and if this crisis does get significantly worse, then we could see the markets for Bitcoin go much lower.

This is due to Bitcoin tracking very closely with the stock markets; if the stock markets are going down with a wider economic downturn for the global economy, Bitcoin is likely to follow. Now, we don’t want Bitcoin to break away in economic sanity but we have seen a strong correlation between those two. We will have to wait and see but if the big market goes down again, that could be another chance for Bitcoin going down as well to buy Bitcoin on the cheap.

BIS proposing a ban on Stable Coins

Another thing that could potentially cause a dip is an announcement that came out on April 14th from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). The BIS is proposing banning of stable coins, so that Tether, USDC, all other different stable coins could potentially be banned. Stable coins are threatening the dollar because it is allowing people to transact freely without the intermediary of the banks. So the stable coins have shaken up the tree.

In the same way that BIS didn’t want to see Facebook’s Libra project go forward, stable coins are a similar threat but a much less controllable. In Libra’s case, they can call Mark Zuckerberg for a trial and tell him “you can’t do that”.  However stable coins such as MakerDAO’s DAI which are decentralized, it is really hard for them to stop them, and so banning stable coins, enabling cryptocurrency exchanges to use it or trade with it, could be a very effective way to stop it. This could end up with people being arrested, bank accounts could be seized and frozen. Stable coins remain quite subtle to that kind of risk, but as of yet, it is far from certain if that will happen. It is only a recommendation by the world’s biggest economies at this point and the final idea might be different, but the fact is that it has been proposed and it can cause a very deep dip in price if stable coins are indeed banned. Right now, stable coins make up around half of the daily volume of cryptocurrency, so we can see a massive volume drop if this happens. Let’s hope that they don’t end up banning stable coins.

Thank you for your Sacrifice

We thank the holder of the account for their sacrifice by having lost their keys. Lost Bitcoin provides a floor for the price. It is not that we stop counting the value of those assets because no one knows for certain if the keys are lost. We continue to count them as part of the overall market cap in cryptocurrency. Let’s say someone lost the keys to 10,000 Bitcoin, and that is simply gone. That’s not on the market anymore so it provides more scarcity on the spot markets for Bitcoin while still being part of the network. 

It creates a base value and is still counted in the ledger. Certainly, it is bad for the person it happens to, but not for the network as a whole. Right now, we see that around a quarter of the Bitcoin has been lost by users. I think we have much better wallets, security and recoverability of assets than before. Especially because back in the early days people didn’t recognize the value of it. Let’s say you held 10000 Bitcoin on your computer and then just forgot about it because it was not worth anything at the beginning. 10000 Bitcoin mined on your laptop and you let it sit on their computer never touching it. Several years later, Bitcoin has become a couple of thousand dollars worth, and if you have 10000 Bitcoin, that is suddenly a lot of money. That has really happened to people.

The Crypto Queen

Scamming in cryptocurrency is very unfortunate, like for example the crypto queen scam is one of the most horrific scams. We have new technology and anytime there is new technology, there will be those people who try to exploit others’ lack of understanding of that new technology. It has happened time and time again. We have seen multiple scams such as OneCoin, and Plustoken in China that last year got over 1 million dollars. Then there is Bitconnect; Bitconnect wallets had over a billion dollars by the time that they finished.

It simply comes down to very few factors. One is greed because people want to make lots of money very fast. Even if it seems too good to be true, they will look the other way ignoring the red flags, and think “I am going to get in there and make all that money” . Moreover, people just being naive about the markets is a huge factor. Not understanding how the markets are and work, and not understanding that you are not going to make 2 or 3 % interest guaranteed everyday. That’s unrealistic and no one is going to give you that kind of money.

Don’t be Too Naive

People don’t understand that if you haven’t been investing, or if you are not familiar with investing, or if you are totally green, you will eventually end up losing all your money. Especially if you are just coming to invest thinking “I’m going to get in and buy 1000 dollars of Bitcoin, and I just got approached by this guy on Facebook saying that he is doing magical Bitcoin mining promising a trading offer of being able to profit 40% interest a day! Wow, that’s going to get me so much money” and then your money is all gone! These are some hard lessons for people to learn.

I understand why people fall for these traps. There is no or very little financial education around being able to identify these kinds of scams. The scammers use a lot of tactics that help make them seem believable. A lot of social proofing goes into this to make it seem like all this is legitimate when it is nothing more than just a scam. If you have been scammed I just want to say don’t give up. I know it’s frustrating and it’s painful to lose your money. I imagine you might be really angry, but it has happened to a lot of other people, and you can build back up. 

For many people, it might be harder to build up your wealth if you are over 60 or so, but you just take it as a really hard lesson. Get back into investing, and just try again but don’t stop investing. What we have seen throughout history is that being in the market is what pays off over time. I would say just buy 50 bucks with Bitcoin and just leave it sitting in the wallet. That’s all you need to do. If you are going to invest in the stock market, it’s also the same thing. Being in the market for the long term is where the winning is done.

I primarily do cryptocurrency. But I invest a lot in my business outside of cryptocurrency. I am open to investing in stock and in gold etc. but in terms of cryptocurrency, I talk a lot about Bitcoin and I focus on it because I see it as the tip of the spear. It is what’s pushing everything forward, and it’s what’s popping the bubble of the financial revolution. 

And everything that coming behind that is really building on top of that initial vision of Bitcoin, so I have invested in Ethereum, and a few other cryptocurrencies and I think there is some incredible potential in the outgoing markets, and I know that a lot of the really die-heart Bitcoin types will say well there is nothing going on there, there is nothing important. I definitely disagree there, there is some really amazing innovation happening now in the cryptocurrency industry as a whole, you see things that are being built up on Ethereum that are just really crazy stuff, and this can be really revolutionary technology for the coming decade.

Beside Crypto, It’s the Nut and Cheese Industry

I have actually been thinking about getting into gold investing recently. I have been thinking about it for a while but I haven’t actually pulled the trigger yet. I will get some gold, I have been trying to find out what gold cryptocurrency I can redeem for actual gold here in New Zealand, but it doesn’t seem like there is any possibility to do that here. Thus, I have to get on a plane and go overseas if I want to do it. Beside that, I am mostly investing in my business which is a food business here in New Zealand together with my partner. We are operating a nut and cheese business. Another thing I would like to go is to gobble up some stocks in local New Zealand energy companies but I have not had the chance to do it yet.

New Zealand Has To Put It’s Mind To It!

There is a cryptocurrency community here in New Zealand as well, but New Zealand is a small country so we have much smaller impact on the crypto markets compared to somewhere like Singapore or Hong Kong which have similar sized populations. Singapore and Hong Kong are among those places that have become but global hubs of business and there is a big thriving cryptocurrency community there as well as many cryptocurrency businesses. There are some cryptocurrency businesses here in New Zealand, but I think that the New Zealand regulators could do a lot more to try and attract businesses to come here and start companies in New Zealand. We see that places like Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong etc. have taken all the business because they have really favorable regulations to invite people in.

Also, retail adoption is quite low in New Zealand, for example in my town there is only one place where you could use Bitcoin to pay for things. It’s not like New Zealand’s government can’t. They absolutely can and sometime I look around realizing that we have done really good things. There is a lot of innovative thinking and progress happening in this country, but then when I see how cryptocurrency is handled here I think “Why? Come on, New Zealand! What are we doing? We are behind here!”

The French are Leading

I think that New Zealand could easily be a leader in the industry if we were to really focus on bringing companies in. We have seen France do it; they recently passed laws giving cryptocurrency entrepreneur visas. This means that, if you want to start a cryptocurrency company in France, they will give you a visa and guarantee you rights to banking access which has been a problem in a lot of countries. Even in places like Singapore which is very crypto friendly. Banks individually say “we are not sure about the crypto companies” when the government clearly has announced it not being illegal and even states that banks “should do it”. However in France, they are guaranteed access to banks, you will be able to do financial services. Some banks and people still ask “you’re a cryptocurrency company, why do you need banks?” Because they still pay taxes, people’s salaries, electricity bills and to buy lunch for people etc. The French government has surpassed everybody by this implementation by doing so, and by giving security to the people.

We haven’t had a lot of discussions about a central bank digital currency. I think with that here in New Zealand, we are going to wait and see what other countries do. Right now we have seen that it is mostly the really big economies who are focusing on the idea, so we see its being tested already. In France, there are illustrations of it, and the US is definitely going to be doing it soon. China is probably going to be the first major economy to deploy a central bank digital currency. The Marshall Island has already introduced it and are on the way of developing their own digital currency based on Algorand technology. But again this is a very small case. We need to focus on the big economies as they will have the most influence. This includes Europe, China, Russia and the United States and that is what is really going to define where the rest of the countries are headed. I can easily imagine New Zealand issuing a central bank digital currency, but it will have to be after the USA and the other countries have done it.

Long term Economic Resolution with Bitcoin

In this economic crisis right now, the crazy printing that the central banks are executing will have a good effect on crypto. We are quickly moving to a situation globally where the world’s major economies don’t work anymore, and there will be a meltdown. I don’t think we are quite there yet, and I think that is some years away. However, this current crisis has underlined once again how deeply sick the economy is. Nothing was fixed after 2008 and no one went to jail. No one really got into trouble for crashing the economy. In fact, a lot of the people who were responsible for 2008 got rewarded and got bonuses for this. 

Now, fast forward 2020, we still have the same structural problems except for that now it is so much worse. What we have seen now is again the exposing of the priorities of governments; it’s about giving as much as possible bail-out money as possible to corporations, as little as possible to the average people to keep from riding on the street, infinite money for Wall-street and infinite liquidity for the stock-market. The governments are buying junk bonds now. These are bonds that no one else wants from companies that are potentially going to get bankrupt or cannot meet their debt repayments. Here, the central banks are stepping in and state “ we will take that stuff that nobody else wants, and we will be the buyer of last resort, take things that are not market viable”. This is not capitalism! Capitalism is “if your company cannot survive and fails, somebody else steps into that picture” This system is socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor. It is a broken system and all this money printing is going to have a very negative effect in the long run. 

For a very short term period, it is not a big problem, but if we think long term, like 10 years or at least by the end of the decade, how much inflation will have happened? I can’t even keep track of the trillions but I would say 15-20 trillion dollars in the last month has been committed to the global economy. Not all of that is printed new money. Some of that is different movement around the books, but at the end of the day it’s new debt, more money printing, more dysfunction in the economy, and all that has a net negative effect for the future of fiat currencies. This also has a net negative effect for the future of central banks who are now so in debt that there will come a point in the next decade potentially where the interest payments under debts will exceed the country’s tax revenue. This is especially true for the US. It is an apocalypse situation and it all speaks very well for Bitcoin; as this inflation kicks off and dollars become less valuable, the only 21 million Bitcoin available is a long term hold. Anybody who is getting shaken out after a week or a couple of months of being in Bitcoin, you have to see the big picture. The guys who bought Bitcoin back then for ~100 dollars, they never thought that we would get here today. It is a long term game, and so the long term hurdlers are the ones who will get rewarded the most.

The Crypto Lark : YouTube Channel

Cryptocurrency Explained Beginner Course

Interviewer , Editor : Lina Kamada

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The Article published on this our Homepage are only for the purpose of providing information. This is not intended as a solicitation for cryptocurrency trading. Also, this article is the author’s personal opinions, and this does not represent opinion for the Company BTCBOX co.,Ltd.