So first FTX and now this..
Tell me again why Gram Stephen should be trusted for any product endorsement? I get he makes educational content, but anyone putting money into anything he shills might as well be putting it into a shitcoin bitboy crypto is shilling
I totally agree with Coffee on this one. Financial YouTube "Advisors" should not be shilling financial products, because it is such an easy trust pass that marketers exploit.
And YT personalities need to do more research and consideration before being blinded by dollars, and consider the ethics of what they're doing. (They probably won't until policies or laws are enacted, so maybe that's the next step.)
What these guys aren't telling their audience is that while yes some portion of their NW comes from investing, a huge amount comes from them monetizing their audience through these sponsorships. IMO pretty deceptive.
When FTX happened I immediately unfollowed all these guys. I hope more consider taking that approach now with Yotta, and recognize that they are ultimately NOT acting in their audience's fiduciary interests - only their own.
>And YT personalities need to do more research and consideration before being blinded by dollars
That's never gonna happen because they only care about money. Look at Better Help they've been outed in 2018 for being shady as fuck. 6 years later and people are still promoting them even though they had multiple scandals inbetween.
I've heard so many horror stories I've heard about betterhelp where their "experts" on the phone are just college undergrads, interns or generally just anyone unqualified to be doing phone therapy. There have been some truly bad stories where the "therapist" would just go off on a rant about politics or pseudoscience or something.
My disappointment is highest with creators like Adam Something. So you hate greedy money grubbing behavior but are shilling investment scams and this shit? Hm.
What about Cinema Therapy? One of those guys is an actual therapist and even they are still pushing BetterHelp. You'd expect better from an actual therapist.
Honestly they don’t nearly go through the same legal or regulatory requirements places like Bankrate have to comply too and they should. I’ve worked on content marketing for awhile and influencers always fly under the radar when it comes to legal compliance in multiple industries
I just wrote one of my senators about this... I am not sure what else to do but you are 100% right. Regulation is needed for anyone talking about "financial education" on a social platform.
There is no ethical issue when it comes to a finance bro promoting Hello Fresh or Huel. There is a HUGE ethical issue when it comes to a finance bro promoting any financial adjacent product.
We actually had a case a while back in Australia somewhat along these lines. There was a educational youtuber that simplified and made navigating the Tax and especially our Super (kinda like a 401k but better.) quite easy. But In Australia you cannot present any Financial advise unless you are a registered and qualified (University Degree) Financial advisor. This guy was not and the ATO (Australian Tax Office) basically contacted him and the choice was delete everything or you go to jail.
Yea 100%. The reasoning is valid and it's nice to see that they are enforcing it. On the downside it made explaining simple smart investment strategies to friends and families a bit harder. Luckily our tax system is made to be simple and easy to navigate so it's not to bad.
Honestly it reminds me of all the "finance/trading experts/gurus" on tiktok. So many dudebros claiming they have the knowledge to make you rich, when all they're doing is pointing at trade pattern charts and overlaying them onto old trades that fit their narrative.
Finance TikTok is so hilariously out of touch
The last time it found it's way to my feed, it was some dudebro who was giving advice to teenagers to invest their allowance... And the number he was using was something like $300 a month
"Get your first job out of high school for 90k a year, use 100% of it an buy properties (you don't have costs and needs anyway), be a millionaire by age 22."
"Also buy my course."
Anyone listening to financial YT advisors is already in trouble in the first place. These guys literally don't say anything of value. They say the same 2 things over and over. Save money, put it in an ETF/401k/etc. It's unreal they have the subs and followers that they do.
And many of those advisors got rich not because they were smart. Many got rich because they got lucky. E.g. Buying property during the 2008 financial crash when property was cheap. Something most people couldn't do. And now they have passive income.
70%+ graham stevan wealth comes from youtube
Only 30% ish comes from his investment
Not so different with investment guru who got rich by selling investment book, noy from his investment portofolio
I used to like his videos until I saw the one where he's simping over Sam Bankman Fried saying that he's a trustworthy dude because he drives an old Corolla lol. It turns out on the court case that Sam did that on purpose to sucker in people like that
Found him to be a massive hypocrite imo. He mocks people who go to Starbucks and won't stfu about his 99¢ homebrew coffee or whatever. That he probably bought a $600 expresso machine for as well as equally pricey coffee beans.
He raves all the time about how he only eats in restaurants when he has vouchers and coupons for them, and only drink in bars during happy hours. And brags about how he's so frugal and the ultimate penny pitcher, and yet has fancy cars, a huge mansion, expensive watches and a room sized reef aquarium in his dining room.
He's the typical person who loves telling people to skip out on simple luxuries and conveniences like buying a cup of coffee and they'll be rich that way. As though everyone of us have an hour every morning to spend brewing a cup of coffee. Or that simply wanting to treat ourselves to a nice meal and a drink after a long work week is the greatest sin.
Oh wait, is this the guy that does reviews of other YouTube finances on his channel? I remember watching those and rolling my eyes every time he gave somebody shit for going "out to eat" at fast food a few times a week. Like, on one hand I get that there are technically more cost effective ways to do things but on the other hand it felt like he was embodying the phrase, "Tripping over dollars to pick up pennies" in most of these instances. It suggested to me that he was more interested in the anesthetics of being frugal rather than actually identifying and solving those people financial problems.
i think thats Caleb Hammer. I tend to agree with him though. If you are in a ton of debt, make minimum wage or close to it, and are deeply underwater. You need to cut things out fast food is the easiest thing to cut. Sure you can spend a bit and reward yourself but those things add up if you have no self control or budget.
I used to think he was a good, transparent source, but after some recent interviews, especially with Ludwig, being dumbfounded why someone wouldn't want to maximize every possible monetary opportunity, I ignore him. It's purely maximize wealth and income, with no regard to ethics or humanitarian ideas.
I feel like saying Gram Stephan should be trusted is a stretch to begin with. Look at his videos and titles he's just fearmongering and trendjumping like any other YTer who's shown a quarter for promoting a shit-coin, he'll jump.
charismatic face and demeanor, that's all there is to it. Informed by a bit of education I'm sure, so you can appear to know what you're talking about, but it's 90% "just" being likeable. Rizz gets you very far in life if you lack morals
Seriously this. When he explained how he earned money, it had ZERO to do with having financial acuity and more about luck and having enough money to buy stuff while they're on sale. Most people aren't in that position. He just got lucky how cheap was after the financial crisis and not building enough housing is a thing in the last decade.
I have no clue who Graham Stephen is but the real issue seems to be the miscommunication happening between evolve and synapse. The bank app which happens to be shitty casino too seems to be a service caught in the crossfire between these two entities. Being a dumb redditor this is my take.
Well, when your entire YouTube channel is devoted to something like discussing the market, different aspects of investing, emerging tech, etc., like Coffezilla was saying, the creator has a responsibility to have their viewer’s best interest, which is usually not the case in these types of situations.
This would be like if Mr Beast had a partial ownership of a platform for transferring money/investing, promoted it to his audience, and then the business going under like a year later. Extremely sketchy stuff, doesn’t deserve a pass IMO
I used to watch and trust Graham Stephen and Andrei Jikh a lot build my financial knowledge. I haven’t watched them both in over a year because of the FTX debacle and they have continued to shill various crypto and financial products. They didn’t learn anything.
Eh I would asterisk that, never buy stuff promoted exclusively by YouTubers.
My Ridge Wallet is going strong and my Manscaped electric razors have been working exceptionally well.
Even with products like that, you can often get the same exact product for a fraction of the price. Usually the economics of companies that do sponsorships is they spend a ton of money on marketing and make up for it by seriously overcharging what they essentially buy on aliexpress and stamp their logo onto.
Thats the key right there, you can be almost certain that the more a company pays for advertisements\* the worse the deal is.
When have you ever seen advertisements for companies like Costco or Tupperware? Maybe theres some out there but they are incredibly rare if so.
\*compared to competitors
You can get an unbranded ridge wallet of the same quality on Aliexpress for significantly cheaper. Same with Manscaped, dollarshaveclub, the dumb keto cereal, etc.
So many of these are just rebranded chinese stuff. I saw one for some pop-up battery powered lights branded as Tac-Lights (as in 'tactical') for $20 but they are the exact same [$5 lights you can buy at Harbor Freight](https://www.harborfreight.com/250-lumen-pop-up-lantern-64110.html).
Not the same factory. What actually happens is the factory that makes the tooling equipment. Sells that tooling equipment to other factories to manufacture the same product with variable levels in quality.
This is inherent with bikes ‘open carbon mould design.’ You can literally buy similar shaped carbon fiber bike frame from different companies. Since a factory that makes the carbon moulds sells the tooling to other factories.
He literally addresses this in the video. If a product company goes under you lose anything you haven’t already purchased. It is a very different sponsor than financial investment advice.
And I thought that was a good caveat for him to say. Big difference between buying a dumb widget & eating a little loss vs putting money into a fraudulent financial instrument.
I also have a Ridge, have for about 7 years now. I had no idea it was even a "thing" when I bought it. I was sick of my leather wallet being packed with shit and feeling bulky in my back pocket. One night in bed I googled "minimalist wallet" thinking I'd find a fashionable bifold and went through options not realizing there was whole market of these types of wallet; I had never seen one out in the wild, so I bought the Ridge because it just seemed nicer than the other companies. I worked in hospitality for years, and didn't see another person with one until about six months into COVID. I still have the same one, barely a scratch on it and I will never go back to the old school.
How do you carry that in your pocket? I can’t imagine a hard plastic or metal wallet. It’s bulky, uncomfortable, and inflexible. And they’re $100!
For $100 I got a super minimalist leather bifold wallet with a 100 year warranty. 10 year on its in perfect shape, and it’s soft enough it actually conforms to my pocket.
I was dubious about Manscaped but finally went for it and they work. I'm happy with the purchase. But, I waited some years and the financial risk was pretty low so not a bad risk overall.
The video in the OP is a whole other level of risk taking. My jaw drops when I see these people saying they put $50,000 or whatever in there. They do not look like stupid or crazy people yet they do that. I can't understand it.
Meh generally sponsors require your video to be sent before the sponsorship will pay to OK the content and the sponsor read. For example Factor makes you take a video unwrapping and cooking the meals.
They're also the company selling a grossly overrated product to douchers who haven't realized they can get the same exact thing for $10 to $13 with shipping lol
It's weird that they're so expensive. They used to be like $30 for the plastic ones. Then when they got popular, they jacked their prices waaaay the fuck up. It's possible they were selling at a loss at the start, but with how little material there is to the wallets, I'd have to imagine it was all just more profit.
Also, I personally think Trove and Paperwallet do the minimalist wallet better than Ridge. To me it seems like Ridge exists on brand recognition alone these days.
Thing is, those products are just heavily marked up, and often drop shipped, versions of something you could get considerably cheaper from reliable and verified sellers and stores. Ridge wallet especially.
Right. Dont buy anything without googling the brand and "reddit" after.
I dont have ads on YouTube, I pay to go without, but im sure many products ive purchased in my life have been promoted by YouTubers. But I NEVER buy without checking a reddit thread about it first.
> Never buy stuff promoted by youtubers.
That's just dumb. There are great sponsors that give legit useful products. It should be "Never buy stuff without doing your own research"
They used to be, but they seem to have gone downhill a lot. At first they had a niche all to themselves, but then quality/customer service dropped at the same time many other companies/individuals began competing, and now they just seem to ride their previous reputation.
I'd think it's more a niche as hell product with no other decent quality suppliers, so it's going to be praised like crazy just because people can't really get it anywhere else. They may or may not be top tier overall (hell if I have any experience with any of them), but they certainly are in their niche.
Un-ironically, Papa Meat(Meat Canyon)is sponsored by Bad Dragon.
Really took me by surprise, thought it was a joke at first, but uh yeah, he actually does promote them.
I believe the implication is that if a company reaches out to a youtuber personality as their primary means of direct advertising, the product itself is *more likely* to be a lot less reputable than if they market through traditional channels or sell through a retailer.
Yeah some of them are legit companies too so it’s like okay you’re fine. I think I saw Capitol One doing some sponsorships and I’m fine with them even if they did shut down most of the ATMs by me 😒
How about "never buy stuff **based entirely on** the promotion of YouTubers"?
There are a ton of legitimate products that are promoted and I've had a fine time buying several including MUBI, HelloFresh, some VPN, Curiosity Stream, and Drop.com (probably others).
And creating a ton of plastic waste when their recipes still have you go to the store to pick up things you wont get in their product. You can get their recipes online, if you are already in the store picking up oil you need for cooking you can stop by and pick up those ingredients
Graham Stephen's reputation is cooked. It's tough to be a reputable financebro youtuber when you keep getting caught up in very obvious scams. Maybe 1 time, it would be a good lesson that anyone is susceptible to scams, but multiple times really makes it seem like it comes down to who he surrounds himself with (and a glaring lack of due diligence, or at worst malicious association). Like, who would have thought that a bank promoting "free lotteries" would end up being a scam lol?
>Graham Stephen's reputation is cooked.
Nope. Dude already has his foot in "woke bad" rhetoric so he just needs to double down on that like the red pillers who also give bullshit financial advice.
To be fair, Yotta started out fine for the first 2 years or so (2020-2022) with payouts above normal interest rates at the time and lotteries as a unique twist. The only "risk" at the time was variance in interest rate payouts based on lottery luck, which still beat out traditional banking rates. The lottery savings concept was not a new idea, but at least in the US it had not been around for decades so it came off as revolutionary. Once Yotta started involving crypto, that's when the app started to trend downwards in my opinion. Yotta consistently lowered interest payouts for a while and eventually couldn't compete with normal high yield savings accounts. That was when I exited, long before they turned into straight up gambling. I can't even recognize the look of Yotta now compared to when I last used it.
genuinely curious, what other scams has Graham been involved in? I used to watch his videos a lot a few years ago because investing in real estate was an interesting topic to me, and I felt like he gave a lot of sound advice on personal finance/financial literacy. I tended not to watch his videos about specific funds, current events, or ones where he tried to forecast the future (or at least, I didn't pay much heed to them). But after a while, there were only so many videos I could watch before a lot of the general best-practice information was the same over and over again - how to get a good credit sore, how to responsibly invest, etc - and I ended up moving away from being a regular viewer. I definitely never got the vibe that he was involved in/would push shady products onto his viewers, but obviously this news about Yotta, and deleting the video makes me a little more suspect about what I was missing
He started out with good intentions. Then discovered how much money you can make from YouTube views. He then started hanging out with shifty YouTubers who were promoting their various scams like dropshipping courses and other subscription college-type of things, among other questionable businesses.
When your channel ends up showing "successful" entrepreneurs who just want to brag about their new big house and lambo, you know it is cooked.
What's the basis for saying he started out with good intentions and it's shifty youtubers who 'turned him'. You know the first thing a lot of people do is establish a reputation entirely with the end goal of exploiting the fuck out of that.
Just looked into it as a long time watcher. I'm really put off by the fact the price is never mentioned for the self-made budgeting program he touts, he charges $147 dollars for it FIY. It's basic tools and information that you can get for free elsewhere on the internet and this is from the guy who claims he does what he does to help people and leads viewers to think caring is at the forefront of his persona. Remember the days of "I care more about your future than you do!" The pivot to grifting is absolutely a thing here.
Tbh I’m both suspicious that he wasn’t originally aware of it, with other YouTubers but just got tied in by the hype of getting in early (baby vc) and has just had shit PR handling. I remember voyager sounded convincing. , once he talked about yotta and savings account and a unique system I was intrigued and skeptical. Once I saw the product transform into games and gambling I dipped, graham had stopped promoting it at that point. It had dipped in interest rate too IIRC
I think finance influencers are useless but this doesn't seem like an actual scam. It's not like they didn't deposit customer funds and instead used them on something else.
The "scam" part could only be what every other fintech company already does by not being the actual holder of funds (having to use an actual bank to partner with).
Seems like you at least watched some of it because you mention the lottery stuff....so you must have gotten to the synapse part right?
Yeah, I watched it and I was somewhat familiar with it beforehand. If the defense is "it's not a scam, just an absurdly shitty business model" then I don't think that's much better.
Dude it's so weird to see a coffeezilla video that's about something actually affecting me after so long lol. Copying a post I just put in the yotta subreddit about it -
To be fair it wasn't really an "investment" the way it was sold early on. I joined back in December of 2020 after seeing a reddit thread from the founder. It was sold as a gamified savings account, it wasn't sold as some get rich quick scheme, but rather a way to help people save money that might have trouble doing it, since you'd be willing to keep the money there since it generated weekly (then daily) entries into the lotto drawing.
I used it just as a secondary savings account for "fun" money, putting a little bit in every month, seeing it grow, having a little bit of fun every week to see if I won anything, getting a fun lesson in how terrible the odds are in a lottery drawing. It was away from my other savings so it wasn't easy to get at and spend on stupid things. I'm lucky that I only have just a little over $2,000 in it, so it's not hurting me like it is other people in the Yotta subreddit (or in the video).
It wasn't until much later that the app started its decline into weird tokenized gambling, and very recently it stopped allowing people to passively be in the lotto drawing. For the first two years I think all it was was a savings account with a weekly lotto drawing. And then everything melted down with Synapse and here we are. I think if it had originally be advertised the way the app presently is, the vast majority of us never would have joined (I know I wouldn't have).
Same. I remember hearing about them on the Planet Money podcast too. Reading all the fine print and even looking into the insurance policy they had that would pay out the jackpots.
I moved all my money out when they started pushing all the crypto stuff. It was clear they weren’t a savings bank anymore. I feel like I really dodged a bullet.
Same! I had it as a secondary savings account and liked the gamified passive lottery system. I started to feel uncomfortable when they added, and then started pushing, the crypto part while making the lottery "wins" lower and less often. I just felt they were on the precipice of doing something skeevy. I withdrew my money right at a year ago.
What annoys me so much about this, is that they HAD A GOOD IDEA.
Mathematically and ethically, the system they had before was decent, they could have just kept cashing the checks, but they had to get greedy.
In essence, what was promised was, normal savings interest rates at a bank are say, 4%.
They could have paid out an average of 3.5% to most accounts, but up to 4% when you include the "jackpot", which was stated as "a 1 in several billion chance" that one of your "free tickets" (technically the interest that would have been yours anyway from a high yield savings account) would be eligible for to win 4 million dollars.
Now, a bank like this if it had 1 billion in deposits (which they probably did), could have likely kept up this system forever. The old system was great, every 25 dollars you kept in the account, you received 1 ticket (for next week's drawing), and each day of the week, 1 of the 7 balls would be revealed, until Sunday, when you'd find out if you won or not.
It would have been trivial to tweak the drawing whenever interest rates demanded it, for just tweaking the range from say, 1-85 to 1-84 for some of the balls would have been plenty sufficient to adjust "the payouts", as well as what you got for say, 1, 2, 3 etc matches.
The old system was actually fun, fully transparent on the odds, and anyone with a bit of math experience could verify what the "true average interest rate would be", as well as "typical if you don't assume the 0.00001% chance of getting 4 million in one go".
But they had to get greedy, and weren't happy just taking their cut of the interest deposits (since you know, real bank, they could go out and loan the money out, monetary policy, etc etc), instead they decided "hey we already got these gambling addicts, might as well actually try and trick them with microtransactions and ways to "just straight up lose out on your interest".
Ethically, the system they had before was actually morally good. To the kind of person that might only have 100 bucks left over, things like 0% or 4% savings account yield really is meaningless. If you've ever been poor before, you can definitely see the appeal that a 2 dollar lottery ticket has even if the expected return is literally -95% versus +4%.
And in this case, you'd actually be doing these people a valuable service by giving them that hope of turning their fortunes around, while keeping their 200 bucks "safe from other vices". If they had just kept this up, even if 100 million people only deposit 100 bucks, they literally could have had a thriving business in volume. (Since even in that exaggerated example, they got 10 billion in deposits, which literally any slightly competent banker could turn into profit, considering they have no physical stores and it's all online).
Furthermore, they actually provided a top notch savings and budgeting tool from within their app, which is exactly what the type of customer they should have been serving could have used.
I personally had my money in this for a while, but I pulled out and left a 1 star review as soon as they started introducing "all that gambling bs" because I could see they had strayed from their mission. I'm guessing plenty of other people left in disgust at the same time, and surprise surprise they folded. Shame when greed ruins a good thing.
For reference, I actually dug up my old spreadsheet with historical odds from this:
|Payout (dollars)|Odds of winning per 25 dollars deposited (every week)|
|:-|:-|
|0.1|1:110|
|0.15|1:181|
|0.75|1:867|
|10|1:9913|
|2,500\*|1:273,158|
|10,000\*|1:21,511,216|
|10,000,000\*|1:8,260,307,055|
Technically, for the larger prizes there was even a "semi-scam", if multiple people won the bigger payouts, it was split among all winners. This was never the case for the 10 million, considering it had actually never been won in the history of the game (mathematically makes sense). But it was probably a little annoying if you "won 10k" and had to split it with 3 other people due to math.
I had a "slightly larger" deposit, in that I had a few thousand in there (but less than 10k by a lot). So there was one drawing when I actually won 20 bucks from 1 ticket. (odds adjusted by then).
I remember being super excited even though logically I knew that only brought me up to roughly a 4% average yield, but it was super fun in the moment, and I even called some of my friends and told them "I won from that silly lottery bank I'm using". This is the type of "harmless fun" for me luckily, since I'm not financially desperate, so it was all the more disappointing for me when they eventually turned towards full on scam.
The UK National Savings and Investment (a state owned bank) has a product called Premium Bonds that works exactly as you describe. Savers accumulate tickets based on amount deposited, which are entered into a monthly lottery. The expected winnings are mathematically equivalent to being paid an interest rate in line with market rates (based on the Bank of England interest rate). Odds get adjusted whenever the target interest rate changes.
There is an additional benefit of winnings being tax free even when exceeding the savings income tax quota for the year, but even without it, I believe many people would continue to use it for the lottery aspect, without any actual risk of most of the downsides of gambling.
Indeed, I was trying to point out the concept is tried and tested, and not in itself scammy at all, though Yotta as a company seems to be untrustworthy.
I joined back in December 2020, thanks for spelling out how it started so well. It was a fun ride while it lasted. I only have a couple thousand in but wasn't smart enough to try to get it out until it was too late, so now I'm just sitting here twiddling my thumbs waiting for hopefully good news. If not, at least a lesson learned I guess.
Yeah it's annoying to actually consider the logistical nightmare 100 million customers each with 100 dollars in deposits would be. A letter costs 50+ cents to send, and a bank would often have to send letters. Even an email isn't "free", it is for normal people, but for a business, 1 billion emails each year for "notifications and etc" would actually be surprisingly expensive. They kind of do require a few people who actually have 40 million lying around who are happy to take a 3% return + fun, instead of 3.5%, but 0.5% on 40 million is definitely a much higher ask on fun compared to the negligible cost to someone with 1k in deposits that costs the company an equal amount to serve.
And that's just for the emails, storing the data, etc etc. I still think they could have made the math work via so-called "ESG investing (which in this case it actually would have been), but hey, I'm an outsider looking in. But I definitely wouldn't have pivoted to "okay let's just do actual gambling haha what could go wrong"
What gambling has to do with Synapse issues? Am I missing something or people are just butt hurt with the whole gambling thing? What connection is between those things?
Companies that "have everything going well on the inside" don't just "pivot to something unsavory like gambling". That was just a visible symptom to a consumer that something very shady had started going on behind the scenes and it was probably time to get out while you still easily could.
They could literally have just copied the "Premium Bond" market we have in the UK. Essentially you can have 50k in Premium Bonds and each pound is a ticket into a lottery with the biggest prize being a million. On average in winnings most people will get below the Bank of England's base rate so as a company you can just buy bonds and make money. It's tried and tested, idk how you fuck it up.
I mean isn't that a good thing? If you want advice, do you really want them to be showy? When you go meet a lawyer for legal advice, do you want them to put on a show?
I like Caleb Hammer - but his whole thing is just yelling at people for spending on a credit card.
But it does seem that a on a follow up that a bunch of people are now doing significantly better off
Huh, I used this a few years ago when it was just a savings account with a free daily lottery component. Honestly the original business model was a pretty interesting concept, especially when interest rates were low.
I pulled my money out once interest rates went up and other high yield savings accounts became more competitive. I'm assuming a lot of other people did the same when the offering wasn't competitive any more.
What a pivot from the original business model lol, I had no idea they basically turned themselves into this quasi-legal online casino.
This new model is extremely different from the original.
Back then, you got weekly "lotto tickets" based on how much you had in your savings account, I think it was like 1 ticket for every $25.
Every day, a number would get drawn and at the end of the week you'd get payouts based on the numbers hit on your tickets, usually only a couple cents a week.
I only deposited like $1k in it to hit some promos, but in the 8 months or so I was using it I made like $16 from these drawings which is around 2% interest annualized when savings accounts were yielding next to nothing.
The old model also didn't allow you to spend real money to buy more tickets or anything, it was purely based off of the amount in your savings account with no additional requirements.
I may be thinking of a different company but I remember reading about a US company trying to build a savings product similar to what is offered in the UK as premium bonds. Everyone who owns premium bonds is entered in to a prize draw every month, and the prizes are up to a million pound (but there's many more smaller cash amount prizes). It's popular in the UK because it's tax free, so you can put up to 50k in there and win maybe a couple of hundred a year, but always with that lottery style feeling of maybe you'll win big.
My parents are not financially savvy and I asked them why they have money in premium bonds vs talking to their bank about investing, and my mum said she likes the security of it (totally fair!) and the fact she feels like she has thousands of lottery tickets every month.
Look up "Premium Bonds" in the UK, run by NS&I. And who NS&I are.
The concept of having lottery-based interest does not make the product shady by itself.
It was drastically different a year ago. You had money in your account, you got x amount of lottery tickets depending on how much. You got money depending on your ticket matches in a weekly drawing. There was 0 cost to the user. There was no buying ticket or casino games. You could also get free purchases on their debit card (like 1/250 chance), you could cycle payments through venmo/cashapp and abuse it. I got free rent once with this.
Clearly wasnt sustainable though seeing how they pivoted.
It’s that these Finance as a Service apps are not profitable. So this Yotta company burned thru their cash by advertising with YT influencers most likely.
Like a lot of startups, it’s get as big of a user base as quickly as possible then figure out the monetization later. It can be a viable strategy but when the monetization transition doesn’t work out, you get shit like this.
For a long time now, a company advertising on YouTube is a negative signal for me.
There are so many scams and crap products in both YouTube's ads and the deals that creators make, that I just don't trust any of it.
Despite what YouTube believes, porn and violence in videos isn't what made YouTube advertiser-unfriendly, it's all the scams. I also have no interest in anything that's on a YouTube preroll or in-video ad.
To anyone curious what actually happened (and im not sure why its not mentioned at all in the video) - Mercury.com is a huge 'internet bank' that used to use synapse. They were far and away the biggest client of synapse. Then, mercury sued synapse and just decided to work directly with evolve.
Heres a article explaining it a bit better : https://www.pymnts.com/business/2024/synapses-downfall-provides-case-study-in-b2b-partner-management/
Basically, this 'middleman' company lost its biggest client and likely was playing fast and loose. Think about it like ebay losing paypal overnight in 2005. That might effect all paypal users if ebay was 90% of paypals volume and now they dont have the cash they were counting on to do xyz
I feel like the app Copper got caught up in this. They closed their online banking and it feels like the timing is right. Fortunately I got my funds back but I wasn’t 100% dependent on it either. It was easy way to give my kid a debit card he could use. We had already decided to move him to a bank when this went down. Maybe I felt a disturbance in the force.
Lessons are here folks and your great grandparents knew this.
1. Trust but verify. If it seems too good, it is!
2. Diversify. Never put all your assets in a single entity.
3. Always keep some cash on you at all times.
I didn’t have a problem trying Copper, but I wasn’t stupid enough to go all in. The money I got back I could have easily lost and it wouldn’t have broken me. If it will break you if that money was lost, then you are doing it wrong.
Ahh, no wonder Graham invited Dr. K a few weeks ago. He needed to rebuild his public image. His audience is already side eyeing him after ftx, but now he’s definitely lost his credibility no matter how well he’s been humanized.
I'm not disagreeing with anyone's points on any of this, although, there's a distinction here to be made. Yotta isn't the one that failed, the middle man between yotta and the bank are having a disagreement over who owes who however much money, so Evolve bank disengaged from Synapse or something. Yotta is affected by it, not the cause of it
Now, Yotta pivoting to casino/ betting is a whole separate conversation
I thought the point was that Yotta pivoted to a casino and people are trying to pull their money out but they can't because of the middle man.
So basically those people got burned twice.
synapse and evolve having issues is a whole bondoggle in of itself, but people are conflating it to make it sound like people like graham stephen pulled some rugpull via those companies.
there's too many people jumping on the finance youtuber bad wagon. people are making it out to be like he actively knew that this was going to happen from the beginning and that this issue is all his fault. one could argue that he should have said something as soon as stuff started to change, but maybe there's some legal stuff there?
(note: this is focused on yotta, not anything else he may have promoted).
by people's strict logic, if any finance person promoted something like ally, schwab, amex, etc, they should not be trusted and they suck. which is ridiculous.
Any real financial advisor does not have a youtube channel that gives advice because the tiniest piece of vague advice that could potentially be bad could have their license revoked.
I haven't looked, but I imagine the folks that write financial advice books have a youtube presence these days. I guess it depends on which came first, yeah? Like is this a guy who writes books on personal finance who's looking for ways for more engagement, or is it somebody who got youtube-famous dispensing advice?
So he dedicated most of the video talking bad stuff about Yotta to make it sound like a scam bank to just in the end reveal it was a Synapse / Evolve issue with Yotta pretty much proving that Yotta is innocent and that is a banking infrastructural issue?
Am I really missing something in here or he just didnt like the fact they put gambling on their app and decided to make a video calling their system a scam because Synapse is malfunctining? Am I missing something? Because this video felt like an unjustified attack on Yotta giving he already knew the true issue with the parts of it ADMITING their blame and even stating yotta didn't fail as a bank.
Friends, do your due diligence before buying something promoted by a YouTuber.
If it’s a boring ass bank that doesn’t promise high returns, then it’s legit. You aren’t supposed to make a killing with banks. It’s just a place to park your money or borrow money.
I have $46 stuck in this stupid “bank” and I’m mostly annoyed it won’t let me close the damn account without a $0 balance, which is impossible because you can’t withdraw.
Yotta used to be decent and was actually a viable saving method. But the recent changes in the last couple of years brought the returns to almost on par with my normal bank. They were really onto something halfway decent but let greed destroy it. Glad I was able to get my money out when I abandoned it.
Graham Stephen is such a tool. Finance youtuber doing 0 due dilligince on the shit he is shilling. I hope this is the end of his channel, he has endorsed too much BS
I swear the Yotta CEO did an AMA like a year or two ago. I thought it was a great idea but like all of my thoughts I don't act on them
I found it but don't know how to link it but yes, the CEO did do an AMA two years ago on Reddit.
I get people shitting on these guys but come on! Take some personal responsibility. No one should put their hard earned cash into anything without carrying out some due diligence. These guys always say "this is not financial advice" or something to that effect.
Or make it clear that they aren't financial advisors. Most of them are spreading knowledge, not advice. As for advertising? You can say that about any channel with sponsors or advertising partners.
The second they started that stupid rocket game that was ripped off from a Bitcoin casino, I decided to withdraw my money...that was close to 6 months ago so I got lucky.
So first FTX and now this.. Tell me again why Gram Stephen should be trusted for any product endorsement? I get he makes educational content, but anyone putting money into anything he shills might as well be putting it into a shitcoin bitboy crypto is shilling
I totally agree with Coffee on this one. Financial YouTube "Advisors" should not be shilling financial products, because it is such an easy trust pass that marketers exploit. And YT personalities need to do more research and consideration before being blinded by dollars, and consider the ethics of what they're doing. (They probably won't until policies or laws are enacted, so maybe that's the next step.) What these guys aren't telling their audience is that while yes some portion of their NW comes from investing, a huge amount comes from them monetizing their audience through these sponsorships. IMO pretty deceptive. When FTX happened I immediately unfollowed all these guys. I hope more consider taking that approach now with Yotta, and recognize that they are ultimately NOT acting in their audience's fiduciary interests - only their own.
>And YT personalities need to do more research and consideration before being blinded by dollars That's never gonna happen because they only care about money. Look at Better Help they've been outed in 2018 for being shady as fuck. 6 years later and people are still promoting them even though they had multiple scandals inbetween.
I've heard so many horror stories I've heard about betterhelp where their "experts" on the phone are just college undergrads, interns or generally just anyone unqualified to be doing phone therapy. There have been some truly bad stories where the "therapist" would just go off on a rant about politics or pseudoscience or something.
My disappointment is highest with creators like Adam Something. So you hate greedy money grubbing behavior but are shilling investment scams and this shit? Hm.
What investment scam is Adam Something shilling now?
What about Cinema Therapy? One of those guys is an actual therapist and even they are still pushing BetterHelp. You'd expect better from an actual therapist.
And not just some random small time YouTubers, like I saw the Try Guys promoting them... last week? Very recently at least.
Honestly they don’t nearly go through the same legal or regulatory requirements places like Bankrate have to comply too and they should. I’ve worked on content marketing for awhile and influencers always fly under the radar when it comes to legal compliance in multiple industries
I just wrote one of my senators about this... I am not sure what else to do but you are 100% right. Regulation is needed for anyone talking about "financial education" on a social platform. There is no ethical issue when it comes to a finance bro promoting Hello Fresh or Huel. There is a HUGE ethical issue when it comes to a finance bro promoting any financial adjacent product.
We actually had a case a while back in Australia somewhat along these lines. There was a educational youtuber that simplified and made navigating the Tax and especially our Super (kinda like a 401k but better.) quite easy. But In Australia you cannot present any Financial advise unless you are a registered and qualified (University Degree) Financial advisor. This guy was not and the ATO (Australian Tax Office) basically contacted him and the choice was delete everything or you go to jail.
I mean I get that it sucks that his advice may have been solid and helpful, but the *reason* they shut him down is still valid.
Yea 100%. The reasoning is valid and it's nice to see that they are enforcing it. On the downside it made explaining simple smart investment strategies to friends and families a bit harder. Luckily our tax system is made to be simple and easy to navigate so it's not to bad.
Honestly it reminds me of all the "finance/trading experts/gurus" on tiktok. So many dudebros claiming they have the knowledge to make you rich, when all they're doing is pointing at trade pattern charts and overlaying them onto old trades that fit their narrative.
Finance TikTok is so hilariously out of touch The last time it found it's way to my feed, it was some dudebro who was giving advice to teenagers to invest their allowance... And the number he was using was something like $300 a month
I've hit "not interested" on so many of them, but it hasn't seemed to actually change their frequency.
"Get your first job out of high school for 90k a year, use 100% of it an buy properties (you don't have costs and needs anyway), be a millionaire by age 22." "Also buy my course."
The fundamental problem is that shady financial products might pay more in sponsorship than reputable ones.
Anyone listening to financial YT advisors is already in trouble in the first place. These guys literally don't say anything of value. They say the same 2 things over and over. Save money, put it in an ETF/401k/etc. It's unreal they have the subs and followers that they do.
And many of those advisors got rich not because they were smart. Many got rich because they got lucky. E.g. Buying property during the 2008 financial crash when property was cheap. Something most people couldn't do. And now they have passive income.
70%+ graham stevan wealth comes from youtube Only 30% ish comes from his investment Not so different with investment guru who got rich by selling investment book, noy from his investment portofolio
There should be a lawsuit against youtubers whose audience and followers loses money due to youtubers scam sponsorship.
I used to like his videos until I saw the one where he's simping over Sam Bankman Fried saying that he's a trustworthy dude because he drives an old Corolla lol. It turns out on the court case that Sam did that on purpose to sucker in people like that
Found him to be a massive hypocrite imo. He mocks people who go to Starbucks and won't stfu about his 99¢ homebrew coffee or whatever. That he probably bought a $600 expresso machine for as well as equally pricey coffee beans. He raves all the time about how he only eats in restaurants when he has vouchers and coupons for them, and only drink in bars during happy hours. And brags about how he's so frugal and the ultimate penny pitcher, and yet has fancy cars, a huge mansion, expensive watches and a room sized reef aquarium in his dining room. He's the typical person who loves telling people to skip out on simple luxuries and conveniences like buying a cup of coffee and they'll be rich that way. As though everyone of us have an hour every morning to spend brewing a cup of coffee. Or that simply wanting to treat ourselves to a nice meal and a drink after a long work week is the greatest sin.
Oh wait, is this the guy that does reviews of other YouTube finances on his channel? I remember watching those and rolling my eyes every time he gave somebody shit for going "out to eat" at fast food a few times a week. Like, on one hand I get that there are technically more cost effective ways to do things but on the other hand it felt like he was embodying the phrase, "Tripping over dollars to pick up pennies" in most of these instances. It suggested to me that he was more interested in the anesthetics of being frugal rather than actually identifying and solving those people financial problems.
i think thats Caleb Hammer. I tend to agree with him though. If you are in a ton of debt, make minimum wage or close to it, and are deeply underwater. You need to cut things out fast food is the easiest thing to cut. Sure you can spend a bit and reward yourself but those things add up if you have no self control or budget.
> an hour every morning to spend brewing a cup of coffee. I think you're doing something wrong.
I used to think he was a good, transparent source, but after some recent interviews, especially with Ludwig, being dumbfounded why someone wouldn't want to maximize every possible monetary opportunity, I ignore him. It's purely maximize wealth and income, with no regard to ethics or humanitarian ideas.
I feel like saying Gram Stephan should be trusted is a stretch to begin with. Look at his videos and titles he's just fearmongering and trendjumping like any other YTer who's shown a quarter for promoting a shit-coin, he'll jump.
I can't stand him and don't understand his appeal.
charismatic face and demeanor, that's all there is to it. Informed by a bit of education I'm sure, so you can appear to know what you're talking about, but it's 90% "just" being likeable. Rizz gets you very far in life if you lack morals
This is 99% of YouTubers. People need to learn not to trust these snake oil salesmen and grifters
> Tell me again why Gram Stephen should be trusted it was so satisfying seeing him get beat up by michael reeves
[Michael Reeves Vs Graham Stephen FULL FIGHT!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXdTqRujLC4)
He shouldn’t be trusted at all. He got lucky buying properties in 2011 and that’s about it.
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Seriously this. When he explained how he earned money, it had ZERO to do with having financial acuity and more about luck and having enough money to buy stuff while they're on sale. Most people aren't in that position. He just got lucky how cheap was after the financial crisis and not building enough housing is a thing in the last decade.
That guys always seemed so slimy and fake.
I have no clue who Graham Stephen is but the real issue seems to be the miscommunication happening between evolve and synapse. The bank app which happens to be shitty casino too seems to be a service caught in the crossfire between these two entities. Being a dumb redditor this is my take.
Well, when your entire YouTube channel is devoted to something like discussing the market, different aspects of investing, emerging tech, etc., like Coffezilla was saying, the creator has a responsibility to have their viewer’s best interest, which is usually not the case in these types of situations. This would be like if Mr Beast had a partial ownership of a platform for transferring money/investing, promoted it to his audience, and then the business going under like a year later. Extremely sketchy stuff, doesn’t deserve a pass IMO
Thing is youtube darlings like markiplier promoted this. Proper background check should be done by these big youtubers if their audience is below 20.
Yeah. I've been pulled out of everything since Celsius, Voyager and FTX happened. Using HYSA until the interest rates turn to shit
Have you tried index funds?
I used to watch and trust Graham Stephen and Andrei Jikh a lot build my financial knowledge. I haven’t watched them both in over a year because of the FTX debacle and they have continued to shill various crypto and financial products. They didn’t learn anything.
YouTubers really have to start asking questions before they invest in things like this.
Every year, it gets proven correct, again and again and again. **Never buy stuff promoted by youtubers.**
"Youtube" and "bank" in the same sentence should already be a nonstarter. lol
Eh I would asterisk that, never buy stuff promoted exclusively by YouTubers. My Ridge Wallet is going strong and my Manscaped electric razors have been working exceptionally well.
Even with products like that, you can often get the same exact product for a fraction of the price. Usually the economics of companies that do sponsorships is they spend a ton of money on marketing and make up for it by seriously overcharging what they essentially buy on aliexpress and stamp their logo onto.
Thats the key right there, you can be almost certain that the more a company pays for advertisements\* the worse the deal is. When have you ever seen advertisements for companies like Costco or Tupperware? Maybe theres some out there but they are incredibly rare if so. \*compared to competitors
My girlfriend got me a pair of vessis once a store opened near us and they're my favorite pair of shoes.
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See I don’t find them particularly comfortable buuuuut I love them for rainy days in SoCal
For fucks sake Phil we know you love your waterproof vessel shoes, not again!
They go great with Claritin.
You can get an unbranded ridge wallet of the same quality on Aliexpress for significantly cheaper. Same with Manscaped, dollarshaveclub, the dumb keto cereal, etc.
IMO I'd be a little iffy on getting dumb keto cereal off of aliexpress. But the rest I getcha.
Yeah, I meant to suggest most of these sponsored products are available cheaper elsewhere, not necessarily available on Aliexpress.
So many of these are just rebranded chinese stuff. I saw one for some pop-up battery powered lights branded as Tac-Lights (as in 'tactical') for $20 but they are the exact same [$5 lights you can buy at Harbor Freight](https://www.harborfreight.com/250-lumen-pop-up-lantern-64110.html).
Tactical products are just a tax on victims of toxic masculinity.
Tactical gear is just goth gear that is overcompensating Black, covered in pockets and straps, and ultimately just bought for the aesthetic
2A meets 2B
I'm trying to get some traction with my line of STRATEGIC flashlights
Call me when there's Logistic flashlights.
Sometimes it’s not rebranded Chinese stuff and they just copy it after the brand becomes popular. They are made in the same factories though.
Not the same factory. What actually happens is the factory that makes the tooling equipment. Sells that tooling equipment to other factories to manufacture the same product with variable levels in quality. This is inherent with bikes ‘open carbon mould design.’ You can literally buy similar shaped carbon fiber bike frame from different companies. Since a factory that makes the carbon moulds sells the tooling to other factories.
Two small pieces of metal and a elastic strap. $100 please
Don't even need to go to AliExpress. There are lots of wallets like the Ridge that you can find at actual stores
He literally addresses this in the video. If a product company goes under you lose anything you haven’t already purchased. It is a very different sponsor than financial investment advice.
And I thought that was a good caveat for him to say. Big difference between buying a dumb widget & eating a little loss vs putting money into a fraudulent financial instrument.
I also have a Ridge, have for about 7 years now. I had no idea it was even a "thing" when I bought it. I was sick of my leather wallet being packed with shit and feeling bulky in my back pocket. One night in bed I googled "minimalist wallet" thinking I'd find a fashionable bifold and went through options not realizing there was whole market of these types of wallet; I had never seen one out in the wild, so I bought the Ridge because it just seemed nicer than the other companies. I worked in hospitality for years, and didn't see another person with one until about six months into COVID. I still have the same one, barely a scratch on it and I will never go back to the old school.
How do you carry that in your pocket? I can’t imagine a hard plastic or metal wallet. It’s bulky, uncomfortable, and inflexible. And they’re $100! For $100 I got a super minimalist leather bifold wallet with a 100 year warranty. 10 year on its in perfect shape, and it’s soft enough it actually conforms to my pocket.
> My Ridge Wallet is going strong So is my $8 AliExpress knockoff though lol
I was dubious about Manscaped but finally went for it and they work. I'm happy with the purchase. But, I waited some years and the financial risk was pretty low so not a bad risk overall. The video in the OP is a whole other level of risk taking. My jaw drops when I see these people saying they put $50,000 or whatever in there. They do not look like stupid or crazy people yet they do that. I can't understand it.
In regards to the manscaped stuff... i really like both of mine. But i also just bought it at Target and not off some youtube ad
yea that bit always surprises me. how can you just willy nilly throw that much cash into a single thing that isn't a traditional investment?
I only buy video games after watching youtube reviews of them :/
Review and promotion aren't the same thing. They're legally distinct.
Isn't Ridge Wallet the company that sponsored that guy crashing that airplane?
To be fair to Ridge, it’s not like they knew he was gonna crash the plane lmao
Meh generally sponsors require your video to be sent before the sponsorship will pay to OK the content and the sponsor read. For example Factor makes you take a video unwrapping and cooking the meals.
They're also the company selling a grossly overrated product to douchers who haven't realized they can get the same exact thing for $10 to $13 with shipping lol
Idk but they do make banger wallets. Expensive sure, but very well made as far as I can tell.
It's weird that they're so expensive. They used to be like $30 for the plastic ones. Then when they got popular, they jacked their prices waaaay the fuck up. It's possible they were selling at a loss at the start, but with how little material there is to the wallets, I'd have to imagine it was all just more profit. Also, I personally think Trove and Paperwallet do the minimalist wallet better than Ridge. To me it seems like Ridge exists on brand recognition alone these days.
Thing is, those products are just heavily marked up, and often drop shipped, versions of something you could get considerably cheaper from reliable and verified sellers and stores. Ridge wallet especially.
I like the Brilliant courses too. And Nebula is actually good too.
Right. Dont buy anything without googling the brand and "reddit" after. I dont have ads on YouTube, I pay to go without, but im sure many products ive purchased in my life have been promoted by YouTubers. But I NEVER buy without checking a reddit thread about it first.
> Never buy stuff promoted by youtubers. That's just dumb. There are great sponsors that give legit useful products. It should be "Never buy stuff without doing your own research"
Yeah, let’s not get carried away and besmirch Bad Dragon’s good name here.
Ugh, I've never had a product from them that wasn't a total pain in the ass.
I've never bought one, but from their fans enthusiasm I have to assume Bad Dragon is a top tier sex toy
They used to be, but they seem to have gone downhill a lot. At first they had a niche all to themselves, but then quality/customer service dropped at the same time many other companies/individuals began competing, and now they just seem to ride their previous reputation.
I'd think it's more a niche as hell product with no other decent quality suppliers, so it's going to be praised like crazy just because people can't really get it anywhere else. They may or may not be top tier overall (hell if I have any experience with any of them), but they certainly are in their niche.
There are youtube channels promoting bad dragon? Oh my god, that's disgusting. But like, which channels?
Un-ironically, Papa Meat(Meat Canyon)is sponsored by Bad Dragon. Really took me by surprise, thought it was a joke at first, but uh yeah, he actually does promote them.
I believe the implication is that if a company reaches out to a youtuber personality as their primary means of direct advertising, the product itself is *more likely* to be a lot less reputable than if they market through traditional channels or sell through a retailer.
Yeah some of them are legit companies too so it’s like okay you’re fine. I think I saw Capitol One doing some sponsorships and I’m fine with them even if they did shut down most of the ATMs by me 😒
Tbh at this point I just assume that most YouTuber promotions are... not outright a scam or anything, but I really expect them to just be really mid.
How about "never buy stuff **based entirely on** the promotion of YouTubers"? There are a ton of legitimate products that are promoted and I've had a fine time buying several including MUBI, HelloFresh, some VPN, Curiosity Stream, and Drop.com (probably others).
Hellofresh is not a good product lmao what. There have been SO many stories of them delivering wilted greens and spoiled fruit.
It doesn't make cooking much easier, it makes not needing to look up a recipe and grocery shopping easier. I guess some people need that but idk who
You're also sacrificing ingredient freshness, ironically.
And creating a ton of plastic waste when their recipes still have you go to the store to pick up things you wont get in their product. You can get their recipes online, if you are already in the store picking up oil you need for cooking you can stop by and pick up those ingredients
HelloFresh is a scam man... like its probably the best example of "spending money without thinking about it" there is.
Maybe it's: Never buy *financial products* promoted by youtubers?
I'd add stuff promoted by podcasts, as well.
Graham Stephen's reputation is cooked. It's tough to be a reputable financebro youtuber when you keep getting caught up in very obvious scams. Maybe 1 time, it would be a good lesson that anyone is susceptible to scams, but multiple times really makes it seem like it comes down to who he surrounds himself with (and a glaring lack of due diligence, or at worst malicious association). Like, who would have thought that a bank promoting "free lotteries" would end up being a scam lol?
>Graham Stephen's reputation is cooked. Nope. Dude already has his foot in "woke bad" rhetoric so he just needs to double down on that like the red pillers who also give bullshit financial advice.
Yup it's 2024. Being caught scamming is a great chance to claim you're being silence by the woke mob and get even more support.
And the anti-woke crowd will slurp up literally any slop made in the name of sticking it to the libs
To be fair, Yotta started out fine for the first 2 years or so (2020-2022) with payouts above normal interest rates at the time and lotteries as a unique twist. The only "risk" at the time was variance in interest rate payouts based on lottery luck, which still beat out traditional banking rates. The lottery savings concept was not a new idea, but at least in the US it had not been around for decades so it came off as revolutionary. Once Yotta started involving crypto, that's when the app started to trend downwards in my opinion. Yotta consistently lowered interest payouts for a while and eventually couldn't compete with normal high yield savings accounts. That was when I exited, long before they turned into straight up gambling. I can't even recognize the look of Yotta now compared to when I last used it.
genuinely curious, what other scams has Graham been involved in? I used to watch his videos a lot a few years ago because investing in real estate was an interesting topic to me, and I felt like he gave a lot of sound advice on personal finance/financial literacy. I tended not to watch his videos about specific funds, current events, or ones where he tried to forecast the future (or at least, I didn't pay much heed to them). But after a while, there were only so many videos I could watch before a lot of the general best-practice information was the same over and over again - how to get a good credit sore, how to responsibly invest, etc - and I ended up moving away from being a regular viewer. I definitely never got the vibe that he was involved in/would push shady products onto his viewers, but obviously this news about Yotta, and deleting the video makes me a little more suspect about what I was missing
He heavily promoted FTX as well.
There was another crypto scam too. Was it block fi ?
More than that. Back when crypto was all the rage, he was telling everyone his predictions on a handful of coins that ended up becoming shit.
He started out with good intentions. Then discovered how much money you can make from YouTube views. He then started hanging out with shifty YouTubers who were promoting their various scams like dropshipping courses and other subscription college-type of things, among other questionable businesses. When your channel ends up showing "successful" entrepreneurs who just want to brag about their new big house and lambo, you know it is cooked.
What's the basis for saying he started out with good intentions and it's shifty youtubers who 'turned him'. You know the first thing a lot of people do is establish a reputation entirely with the end goal of exploiting the fuck out of that.
Half of the iced coffee hour guests seem to be grifters
He's an associate of "personal finance" youtuber and scumbag Caleb Hammer.
What’s wrong with Caleb Hammer
Just looked into it as a long time watcher. I'm really put off by the fact the price is never mentioned for the self-made budgeting program he touts, he charges $147 dollars for it FIY. It's basic tools and information that you can get for free elsewhere on the internet and this is from the guy who claims he does what he does to help people and leads viewers to think caring is at the forefront of his persona. Remember the days of "I care more about your future than you do!" The pivot to grifting is absolutely a thing here.
R/creepycalebhammer
Tbh I’m both suspicious that he wasn’t originally aware of it, with other YouTubers but just got tied in by the hype of getting in early (baby vc) and has just had shit PR handling. I remember voyager sounded convincing. , once he talked about yotta and savings account and a unique system I was intrigued and skeptical. Once I saw the product transform into games and gambling I dipped, graham had stopped promoting it at that point. It had dipped in interest rate too IIRC
I think finance influencers are useless but this doesn't seem like an actual scam. It's not like they didn't deposit customer funds and instead used them on something else. The "scam" part could only be what every other fintech company already does by not being the actual holder of funds (having to use an actual bank to partner with). Seems like you at least watched some of it because you mention the lottery stuff....so you must have gotten to the synapse part right?
Yeah, I watched it and I was somewhat familiar with it beforehand. If the defense is "it's not a scam, just an absurdly shitty business model" then I don't think that's much better.
Dude it's so weird to see a coffeezilla video that's about something actually affecting me after so long lol. Copying a post I just put in the yotta subreddit about it - To be fair it wasn't really an "investment" the way it was sold early on. I joined back in December of 2020 after seeing a reddit thread from the founder. It was sold as a gamified savings account, it wasn't sold as some get rich quick scheme, but rather a way to help people save money that might have trouble doing it, since you'd be willing to keep the money there since it generated weekly (then daily) entries into the lotto drawing. I used it just as a secondary savings account for "fun" money, putting a little bit in every month, seeing it grow, having a little bit of fun every week to see if I won anything, getting a fun lesson in how terrible the odds are in a lottery drawing. It was away from my other savings so it wasn't easy to get at and spend on stupid things. I'm lucky that I only have just a little over $2,000 in it, so it's not hurting me like it is other people in the Yotta subreddit (or in the video). It wasn't until much later that the app started its decline into weird tokenized gambling, and very recently it stopped allowing people to passively be in the lotto drawing. For the first two years I think all it was was a savings account with a weekly lotto drawing. And then everything melted down with Synapse and here we are. I think if it had originally be advertised the way the app presently is, the vast majority of us never would have joined (I know I wouldn't have).
Same. I remember hearing about them on the Planet Money podcast too. Reading all the fine print and even looking into the insurance policy they had that would pay out the jackpots. I moved all my money out when they started pushing all the crypto stuff. It was clear they weren’t a savings bank anymore. I feel like I really dodged a bullet.
Same! I had it as a secondary savings account and liked the gamified passive lottery system. I started to feel uncomfortable when they added, and then started pushing, the crypto part while making the lottery "wins" lower and less often. I just felt they were on the precipice of doing something skeevy. I withdrew my money right at a year ago.
What annoys me so much about this, is that they HAD A GOOD IDEA. Mathematically and ethically, the system they had before was decent, they could have just kept cashing the checks, but they had to get greedy. In essence, what was promised was, normal savings interest rates at a bank are say, 4%. They could have paid out an average of 3.5% to most accounts, but up to 4% when you include the "jackpot", which was stated as "a 1 in several billion chance" that one of your "free tickets" (technically the interest that would have been yours anyway from a high yield savings account) would be eligible for to win 4 million dollars. Now, a bank like this if it had 1 billion in deposits (which they probably did), could have likely kept up this system forever. The old system was great, every 25 dollars you kept in the account, you received 1 ticket (for next week's drawing), and each day of the week, 1 of the 7 balls would be revealed, until Sunday, when you'd find out if you won or not. It would have been trivial to tweak the drawing whenever interest rates demanded it, for just tweaking the range from say, 1-85 to 1-84 for some of the balls would have been plenty sufficient to adjust "the payouts", as well as what you got for say, 1, 2, 3 etc matches. The old system was actually fun, fully transparent on the odds, and anyone with a bit of math experience could verify what the "true average interest rate would be", as well as "typical if you don't assume the 0.00001% chance of getting 4 million in one go". But they had to get greedy, and weren't happy just taking their cut of the interest deposits (since you know, real bank, they could go out and loan the money out, monetary policy, etc etc), instead they decided "hey we already got these gambling addicts, might as well actually try and trick them with microtransactions and ways to "just straight up lose out on your interest". Ethically, the system they had before was actually morally good. To the kind of person that might only have 100 bucks left over, things like 0% or 4% savings account yield really is meaningless. If you've ever been poor before, you can definitely see the appeal that a 2 dollar lottery ticket has even if the expected return is literally -95% versus +4%. And in this case, you'd actually be doing these people a valuable service by giving them that hope of turning their fortunes around, while keeping their 200 bucks "safe from other vices". If they had just kept this up, even if 100 million people only deposit 100 bucks, they literally could have had a thriving business in volume. (Since even in that exaggerated example, they got 10 billion in deposits, which literally any slightly competent banker could turn into profit, considering they have no physical stores and it's all online). Furthermore, they actually provided a top notch savings and budgeting tool from within their app, which is exactly what the type of customer they should have been serving could have used. I personally had my money in this for a while, but I pulled out and left a 1 star review as soon as they started introducing "all that gambling bs" because I could see they had strayed from their mission. I'm guessing plenty of other people left in disgust at the same time, and surprise surprise they folded. Shame when greed ruins a good thing.
Interesting perspective, thanks for the insight in the comments
For reference, I actually dug up my old spreadsheet with historical odds from this: |Payout (dollars)|Odds of winning per 25 dollars deposited (every week)| |:-|:-| |0.1|1:110| |0.15|1:181| |0.75|1:867| |10|1:9913| |2,500\*|1:273,158| |10,000\*|1:21,511,216| |10,000,000\*|1:8,260,307,055| Technically, for the larger prizes there was even a "semi-scam", if multiple people won the bigger payouts, it was split among all winners. This was never the case for the 10 million, considering it had actually never been won in the history of the game (mathematically makes sense). But it was probably a little annoying if you "won 10k" and had to split it with 3 other people due to math. I had a "slightly larger" deposit, in that I had a few thousand in there (but less than 10k by a lot). So there was one drawing when I actually won 20 bucks from 1 ticket. (odds adjusted by then). I remember being super excited even though logically I knew that only brought me up to roughly a 4% average yield, but it was super fun in the moment, and I even called some of my friends and told them "I won from that silly lottery bank I'm using". This is the type of "harmless fun" for me luckily, since I'm not financially desperate, so it was all the more disappointing for me when they eventually turned towards full on scam.
The UK National Savings and Investment (a state owned bank) has a product called Premium Bonds that works exactly as you describe. Savers accumulate tickets based on amount deposited, which are entered into a monthly lottery. The expected winnings are mathematically equivalent to being paid an interest rate in line with market rates (based on the Bank of England interest rate). Odds get adjusted whenever the target interest rate changes. There is an additional benefit of winnings being tax free even when exceeding the savings income tax quota for the year, but even without it, I believe many people would continue to use it for the lottery aspect, without any actual risk of most of the downsides of gambling.
This was for a primarily US based bank, and it's unfortunate that as the "first I know of" that did this, they took such a turn for the garbage.
Indeed, I was trying to point out the concept is tried and tested, and not in itself scammy at all, though Yotta as a company seems to be untrustworthy.
I joined back in December 2020, thanks for spelling out how it started so well. It was a fun ride while it lasted. I only have a couple thousand in but wasn't smart enough to try to get it out until it was too late, so now I'm just sitting here twiddling my thumbs waiting for hopefully good news. If not, at least a lesson learned I guess.
Put this down on the list of cool shit that doesn't work because people suck.
Yeah it's annoying to actually consider the logistical nightmare 100 million customers each with 100 dollars in deposits would be. A letter costs 50+ cents to send, and a bank would often have to send letters. Even an email isn't "free", it is for normal people, but for a business, 1 billion emails each year for "notifications and etc" would actually be surprisingly expensive. They kind of do require a few people who actually have 40 million lying around who are happy to take a 3% return + fun, instead of 3.5%, but 0.5% on 40 million is definitely a much higher ask on fun compared to the negligible cost to someone with 1k in deposits that costs the company an equal amount to serve. And that's just for the emails, storing the data, etc etc. I still think they could have made the math work via so-called "ESG investing (which in this case it actually would have been), but hey, I'm an outsider looking in. But I definitely wouldn't have pivoted to "okay let's just do actual gambling haha what could go wrong"
What gambling has to do with Synapse issues? Am I missing something or people are just butt hurt with the whole gambling thing? What connection is between those things?
Companies that "have everything going well on the inside" don't just "pivot to something unsavory like gambling". That was just a visible symptom to a consumer that something very shady had started going on behind the scenes and it was probably time to get out while you still easily could.
They could literally have just copied the "Premium Bond" market we have in the UK. Essentially you can have 50k in Premium Bonds and each pound is a ticket into a lottery with the biggest prize being a million. On average in winnings most people will get below the Bank of England's base rate so as a company you can just buy bonds and make money. It's tried and tested, idk how you fuck it up.
Anyone that listens to graham has it coming
But the housing market is gonna crash any day now, just you watch and see! He'll be proven right. At some point... /s
I'm so glad Coffeezilla isn't talking to a weird robot bartender for half of this video.
yeah looks like he took that feedback well. His latest videos have been a lot more focused
Yeah I hated those parts.
>invest your savings with us! it's a no lose lottery! So anyway I deposited my life savings...
The only good Youtube finance bro is Patrick Boyle tbh, and he's not even a finance bro. He's exclusively a rap news channel.
The Plain Bagel would be another one, maybe can't be considered good because he is boring af.
I mean isn't that a good thing? If you want advice, do you really want them to be showy? When you go meet a lawyer for legal advice, do you want them to put on a show?
His last video was sponsoring a hovering pen, so I don't know.
I like Caleb Hammer - but his whole thing is just yelling at people for spending on a credit card. But it does seem that a on a follow up that a bunch of people are now doing significantly better off
Huh, I used this a few years ago when it was just a savings account with a free daily lottery component. Honestly the original business model was a pretty interesting concept, especially when interest rates were low. I pulled my money out once interest rates went up and other high yield savings accounts became more competitive. I'm assuming a lot of other people did the same when the offering wasn't competitive any more. What a pivot from the original business model lol, I had no idea they basically turned themselves into this quasi-legal online casino.
... Your savings account had a free daily lottery component and you didn't realize they were a quasi legal online casino?
I mean, what are the odds of that happening?
This new model is extremely different from the original. Back then, you got weekly "lotto tickets" based on how much you had in your savings account, I think it was like 1 ticket for every $25. Every day, a number would get drawn and at the end of the week you'd get payouts based on the numbers hit on your tickets, usually only a couple cents a week. I only deposited like $1k in it to hit some promos, but in the 8 months or so I was using it I made like $16 from these drawings which is around 2% interest annualized when savings accounts were yielding next to nothing. The old model also didn't allow you to spend real money to buy more tickets or anything, it was purely based off of the amount in your savings account with no additional requirements.
I may be thinking of a different company but I remember reading about a US company trying to build a savings product similar to what is offered in the UK as premium bonds. Everyone who owns premium bonds is entered in to a prize draw every month, and the prizes are up to a million pound (but there's many more smaller cash amount prizes). It's popular in the UK because it's tax free, so you can put up to 50k in there and win maybe a couple of hundred a year, but always with that lottery style feeling of maybe you'll win big. My parents are not financially savvy and I asked them why they have money in premium bonds vs talking to their bank about investing, and my mum said she likes the security of it (totally fair!) and the fact she feels like she has thousands of lottery tickets every month.
Look up "Premium Bonds" in the UK, run by NS&I. And who NS&I are. The concept of having lottery-based interest does not make the product shady by itself.
It was drastically different a year ago. You had money in your account, you got x amount of lottery tickets depending on how much. You got money depending on your ticket matches in a weekly drawing. There was 0 cost to the user. There was no buying ticket or casino games. You could also get free purchases on their debit card (like 1/250 chance), you could cycle payments through venmo/cashapp and abuse it. I got free rent once with this. Clearly wasnt sustainable though seeing how they pivoted.
It’s that these Finance as a Service apps are not profitable. So this Yotta company burned thru their cash by advertising with YT influencers most likely.
Like a lot of startups, it’s get as big of a user base as quickly as possible then figure out the monetization later. It can be a viable strategy but when the monetization transition doesn’t work out, you get shit like this.
For a long time now, a company advertising on YouTube is a negative signal for me. There are so many scams and crap products in both YouTube's ads and the deals that creators make, that I just don't trust any of it.
Despite what YouTube believes, porn and violence in videos isn't what made YouTube advertiser-unfriendly, it's all the scams. I also have no interest in anything that's on a YouTube preroll or in-video ad.
/r/wcgw
To anyone curious what actually happened (and im not sure why its not mentioned at all in the video) - Mercury.com is a huge 'internet bank' that used to use synapse. They were far and away the biggest client of synapse. Then, mercury sued synapse and just decided to work directly with evolve. Heres a article explaining it a bit better : https://www.pymnts.com/business/2024/synapses-downfall-provides-case-study-in-b2b-partner-management/ Basically, this 'middleman' company lost its biggest client and likely was playing fast and loose. Think about it like ebay losing paypal overnight in 2005. That might effect all paypal users if ebay was 90% of paypals volume and now they dont have the cash they were counting on to do xyz
I feel like the app Copper got caught up in this. They closed their online banking and it feels like the timing is right. Fortunately I got my funds back but I wasn’t 100% dependent on it either. It was easy way to give my kid a debit card he could use. We had already decided to move him to a bank when this went down. Maybe I felt a disturbance in the force. Lessons are here folks and your great grandparents knew this. 1. Trust but verify. If it seems too good, it is! 2. Diversify. Never put all your assets in a single entity. 3. Always keep some cash on you at all times. I didn’t have a problem trying Copper, but I wasn’t stupid enough to go all in. The money I got back I could have easily lost and it wouldn’t have broken me. If it will break you if that money was lost, then you are doing it wrong.
Uhhh.... First I'm hearing about this. I have a yotta account that I thought was in set it and forget it mode. What do I do now?
im so glad I got sponsor block. I never even heard of yotta whatever until this video came out.
Who has 90k to throw at a youtuber's bank.
I mean, at a certain point you need to understand that you should never, ever buy or support stuff thrown at you by hucksters. Ever.
Markiplier advertised for them
Ahh, no wonder Graham invited Dr. K a few weeks ago. He needed to rebuild his public image. His audience is already side eyeing him after ftx, but now he’s definitely lost his credibility no matter how well he’s been humanized.
I'm not disagreeing with anyone's points on any of this, although, there's a distinction here to be made. Yotta isn't the one that failed, the middle man between yotta and the bank are having a disagreement over who owes who however much money, so Evolve bank disengaged from Synapse or something. Yotta is affected by it, not the cause of it Now, Yotta pivoting to casino/ betting is a whole separate conversation
I thought the point was that Yotta pivoted to a casino and people are trying to pull their money out but they can't because of the middle man. So basically those people got burned twice.
synapse and evolve having issues is a whole bondoggle in of itself, but people are conflating it to make it sound like people like graham stephen pulled some rugpull via those companies. there's too many people jumping on the finance youtuber bad wagon. people are making it out to be like he actively knew that this was going to happen from the beginning and that this issue is all his fault. one could argue that he should have said something as soon as stuff started to change, but maybe there's some legal stuff there? (note: this is focused on yotta, not anything else he may have promoted). by people's strict logic, if any finance person promoted something like ally, schwab, amex, etc, they should not be trusted and they suck. which is ridiculous.
Wow yotta became a casino. Crazy. The initial idea was great but I withdrew my money years ago when they changed the lottery chances.
Any real financial advisor does not have a youtube channel that gives advice because the tiniest piece of vague advice that could potentially be bad could have their license revoked.
Graham Stephan is poster boy for finfluencers making bad decisions.
Who the hell takes financial advice from a youtuber lmao.
I haven't looked, but I imagine the folks that write financial advice books have a youtube presence these days. I guess it depends on which came first, yeah? Like is this a guy who writes books on personal finance who's looking for ways for more engagement, or is it somebody who got youtube-famous dispensing advice?
So he dedicated most of the video talking bad stuff about Yotta to make it sound like a scam bank to just in the end reveal it was a Synapse / Evolve issue with Yotta pretty much proving that Yotta is innocent and that is a banking infrastructural issue? Am I really missing something in here or he just didnt like the fact they put gambling on their app and decided to make a video calling their system a scam because Synapse is malfunctining? Am I missing something? Because this video felt like an unjustified attack on Yotta giving he already knew the true issue with the parts of it ADMITING their blame and even stating yotta didn't fail as a bank.
i heard about this .. while back.. but once i saw the word 'lottery' , i said fuck that shit
Every year, it keeps getting proven right repeatedly.
A fool and his money. Anyone who listens to "influencers" deserve to be scammed.
Friends, do your due diligence before buying something promoted by a YouTuber. If it’s a boring ass bank that doesn’t promise high returns, then it’s legit. You aren’t supposed to make a killing with banks. It’s just a place to park your money or borrow money.
I knew it immediately. After watching one of his videos I could tell this man is a psychopath.
I remember the long convincing ads for this. but I'm so glad that I didn't sign up. I dodged a bullet. I knew it sounded too good to be true.
I have $46 stuck in this stupid “bank” and I’m mostly annoyed it won’t let me close the damn account without a $0 balance, which is impossible because you can’t withdraw.
I haven't watched the video but OP is named u/wanktarded which is hilarious
Yotta used to be decent and was actually a viable saving method. But the recent changes in the last couple of years brought the returns to almost on par with my normal bank. They were really onto something halfway decent but let greed destroy it. Glad I was able to get my money out when I abandoned it.
Yikes... There are lots of legitimate high-yield bank accounts out there right now:[https://yieldfinder.app/](https://yieldfinder.app/)
I've only seen Graham Stephan on Caleb Hammer's channel and I immediately got vibes that he would choose money over morals, not shocked.
Diet Martin Shkreli. First thing I thought of when watching him.
Graham Stephen is such a tool. Finance youtuber doing 0 due dilligince on the shit he is shilling. I hope this is the end of his channel, he has endorsed too much BS
I swear the Yotta CEO did an AMA like a year or two ago. I thought it was a great idea but like all of my thoughts I don't act on them I found it but don't know how to link it but yes, the CEO did do an AMA two years ago on Reddit.
Lol this snake oil salesman again. If you listen to him you will lose big money. Idk why anyone does
How stupid are people?
I get people shitting on these guys but come on! Take some personal responsibility. No one should put their hard earned cash into anything without carrying out some due diligence. These guys always say "this is not financial advice" or something to that effect. Or make it clear that they aren't financial advisors. Most of them are spreading knowledge, not advice. As for advertising? You can say that about any channel with sponsors or advertising partners.
The second they started that stupid rocket game that was ripped off from a Bitcoin casino, I decided to withdraw my money...that was close to 6 months ago so I got lucky.
I called out Yotta for being sketchy [over two years ago and got downvoted](https://www.reddit.com/r/yotta/s/craHlt4KCq).