- Yesterday, YieldNodes,
a project that I've talked about on the channel before,
announced that it's taking a new direction
with YieldNodes Pro.
And I'm going to be discussing the key plans
for this project,
what that means for us as investors,
and my concerns and questions that I have.
And I'm actually postponing a fun video
that I had planned for this much more serious topic,
and I was going to hold off from this video
waiting for the YieldNodes team to respond.
But I decided to push ahead for two different reasons.
Number one is my community and you guys here on YouTube.
Being one of the few people
that attended YieldNodes' audit to look at the numbers
that actually has a YouTube channel,
I feel more responsibility here to speak up on the matter.
And people are asking me questions,
what are my thoughts on it?
And I may not know the answer to all of their questions,
but I wanna lay out the cards
of the information that we do know.
But I think it's an important conversation to have
rather than pushing ahead with other videos
while we're waiting on the YieldNodes team's response.
And number two is,
although I'm not going to be giving
much of an opinion in this video,
just going to be looking at the facts.
So, one thing that I'm really not pleased about
is the whole communication
of the YieldNodes team on this one,
and I did not want to follow in their footsteps.
In fact, I wanted to do the exact opposite.
So, if you do like timely updates,
be sure to hit that like button.
And this video may not be as well-edited
as some of my other videos,
but I understand the timeliness of this really matters.
Before we get into the announcement,
I wanna look at this email that was sent on October 8th,
three days before the email
that was sent out on October 11th.
And if you didn't see either of these emails,
I'll leave them down below
if you wanna download them for yourself.
But in summary,
this email on October 8th said the following.
In summary, they announced that they're shifting
the withdrawal from their Binance
to another exchange or somewhere else
because Binance is locking up their funds,
and they even attach a video for proof of this.
And they explain how that moving millions of dollars
can cause exchanges to flag funds,
and although they don't think that Binance
will hold the funds for long,
they're not sure how long that's going to be.
And then they mention, because of this,
not only are they going to be
switching out the payout scheme,
but they're going to be delaying the payouts
for the time being to, quote,
"Shift assets where necessary,
"causing less strain on the servers,
"giving exchanges less power to bully us
"and dictate what can be paid."
So, they were just going to delay it for a little bit.
After the email was sent,
I didn't really think too much of it, to be honest.
The reason being is, and I have this on camera,
the team said in the audit that YieldNodes
wouldn't really be in trouble until five or 10K BTC was hit
for a substantial period of time.
BTC is around 19 grand right now,
about the same as when I visited July in Malta at the audit.
And secondly, last month was YieldNodes'
three-year birthday
and it's not missed a 5% monthly payout since then.
And given the fact that I saw all of their funds
and I know that they can pay out all of their investors,
I'm thinking, no big deal.
Let's just move on.
Then on October 11th of 2022,
that's when we got this email:
With immediate effect,
we will restructure YieldNodes into YieldNodes Pro
to ensure hedging by real assets
and to ensure that our shared values
are preserved in the long term.
Now, I'm gonna pull this email up,
but what does this actually mean, okay?
Well, I'm gonna go ahead
and get into this email and decipher it,
because some of it is a little vague.
But they start off, it's from Urs,
so one of the top dogs at YieldNodes.
And he says: Due to the current crypto winter
and the general problematic economic situation,
war in Ukraine, high inflation, high energy prices,
weakness of Euro, et cetera,
we are forced to hedge our virtual assets
with real and sustainable assets
and to provide and manage them in a decentralized way.
So, then they use that as the reason
to switch over to YieldNodes Pro,
which I'm gonna get into that, too.
But that's not enough of a reason, guys,
because those same circumstances
were there during the audit, okay?
All of that that you just mentioned in the email
as the reason why we're going to YieldNodes Pro now,
that needs explanation.
Because all of that, the high gas prices,
the war in Ukraine, the crypto winter,
that was this there in Malta in July of 2022.
So, I want more elaboration on that.
But then, let's go ahead and continue:
The repeated blocking of exchanges
like Binance and Changelly
and the difficulties in lending our assets
show that it is time to implement
the DECNOMY strategy as soon as possible
and tie the value of our coins to real assets.
So, what this says to me is that on October 8th
when we got that email letting them know
that their funds were locked up,
this has been an ongoing thing
and they are using this as a reason to,
another reason to convert over to YieldNodes Pro.
Which, once again, I want more of an explanation on this
because there are big crypto whales that can move millions,
maybe hundreds of millions of dollars around.
I feel like this isn't the answer
based on this data right now.
Maybe there's some stuff that wasn't mentioned in here,
but we don't know that.
So, based on this data,
I don't see why this justifies the move over.
Okay, so let's go ahead and continue:
The general selling pressure has negative impact,
especially on the prices of assets
that are based on monetary values,
and we currently have hardly any chance
to cash out our profits from the Master Nodes.
In addition, there are constant attacks on our coins
combined with insubstantial statements
that we are a scam.
Okay, "The general selling pressure
"has had a negative impact."
Does that mean on the 20 coins that you guys have?
Is there selling pressure there?
Because prices are about the same since July of 2020, okay?
BTC was about the same price in July as it is now, okay?
So, what that leads me to infer or ask is,
does that mean people leaving the project?
Which shouldn't matter anyway
because you guys have more than enough assets
to pay people out.
"We've shown through transparency, openness, and real audits
"that we do a decent job and a good of a team.
"However, we see this is repeatedly undermined
"by players in the market who only wants to gamble."
I think they're talking about people
who aren't in the YieldNodes for the long term.
And then basically what they say
is they're now converting all of the money in YieldNodes
over to these real assets
that amount for about 300 million euros.
They list all of these assets.
They don't go into too much detail.
There's some hubs in Germany.
I don't really understand the whole power plant thing.
They're really liking power plants.
And they're going to elaborate more on this in the future.
That's not my problem.
They go down here and then they continue to say
that we will then reap rewards from these said assets,
but it's not going to start until Q2 of 2023.
In the meantime, what they're doing
is they're not allowing for any withdrawals,
they're not allowing for anything like our original funds.
Anything that we've not withdrawn yet,
they're not letting us take out,
and they're converting over to these assets.
From these said assets, we will make 5% per quarter.
So, not 5% per month.
I'm okay with 5% per quarter,
but this is where we get to the problem,
and it's that they're giving us these NFTs,
basically these smart contracts that say
we are entitled to these 5% rewards.
And this is nothing new.
I mean, there have been guys since 2020, 2021
where we'll take an NFT and they're like,
"Look, we'll buy a house with this NFT.
"There's 100 people who buy a house.
"You get 1/100 share of this house
"and you can stay at it a certain amount of time per year."
That's, in essence, really what's happening here.
It's not correlated to the NFT market, so it's not,
it's only tied to YieldNodes.
But here's the problem, guys, is that NFTs,
if we wanna sell our original balance,
we're going to have to find a buyer for that NFT.
So, who is gonna wanna enter YieldNodes now?
Well, that's my thing.
What is YieldNodes, that's my question,
is what is YieldNodes going to do
to make it to where people want to buy these NFTs?
And it can't just be producing a 5% reward.
And I'll get to that in a second,
because we're gonna get these NFTs,
we're gonna get these,
and then we're gonna be guaranteed 5% return per quarter.
And they end the email,
I'll end the email before I get into this, and they say:
Some will be disappointed by us and may even hate us for it.
But if you think it through,
you'll see that it's the best way for everyone
to continue to get returns from YieldNodes
and avoid losses.
That statement right there,
I have a massive problem with,
because what you're saying
is that you know what's best for us
and we can't take a loss if we want to, right?
Back in March of this year,
I cashed out 90% of my crypto portfolio.
Reason being is because
even if I took a little bit of a loss or some of a loss,
I knew that, one, the market was gonna go down more.
And two, the opportunity cost
of what I could do with my money.
I have a million things I can put my money in.
Or maybe some people don't even wanna do that.
Maybe you just want your money back
even if it's at a 50% loss.
And what they're saying
is that we're doing what we think is best.
And this gets to the crux of my argument, and it's that,
what was the point of doing these audits
to show that we have the funds,
we can pay back our investors if we have to,
and you're not even giving us the option
when the time comes?
That's a problem.
I feel like there's a few ways to still remedy this.
I know, I went to the audit.
I know that they have the cash.
They can pay out us right now if they wanted to.
I know that they're not letting us do 25% withdrawals.
Even if they were to do 50% withdrawals
I think would go a long way,
because here's the problem the protocol is going to face
if they decide to do this.
Even if they pull this off,
let's say that YieldNodes converts these over to assets.
I'll even go out on a limb
and say instead of 5% per quarter,
they start paying us out 5% per month.
In the back of our minds,
is this going to be a permanent black eye on the project
where people are like:
Well, this is great,
and they could have the funds to pay back our investors.
But we know when the time comes and times get tough,
whether all these external circumstances
that have been here for an entire year,
they're not gonna let us do it.
They're not gonna give us the choice.
And I don't know how you're gonna remedy that, guys.
I don't know.
That's why I'm genuinely curious.
These are questions, okay?
I'm inviting Steve or anyone
that wants to come onto the channel from YieldNodes
and answer my questions,
because this portal in Q4 of 2023
where we can finally sell our NFTs,
I don't understand who's going to buy them.
Now, a third option that I haven't talked about yet
that the YieldNodes team could do
is that they could buy these NFTs back
from the community as well, right?
That's a possibility, too.
So, let me answer the question,
do I think YieldNodes is a scam?
Not necessarily.
I don't think that they're maliciously doing this.
I just don't think that they've thought through
all of these questions that I've asked,
or if they have, they didn't provide them in the email.
And this gets to my bigger point,
is the whole communication of how this is handled.
I feel like I've met a lot of the team members.
They're nice people,
but it doesn't mean that they handled this right.
Because the way it goes right now
is that these 5% per quarter that will start in 2023,
if you just invested,
let's say you've made 5% of your money back so far,
that means that it's going to take
19 quarters or 4.75 years starting in 2023
for you to break even,
assuming you can't get your original investment back.
So, that's where we're at with things.
And I feel like all of this could have been avoided,
like I said,
if communication was just upped a little bit.
I feel like I've brought some pretty valid questions
to the table.
And I messaged Steve,
but I haven't gotten an answer back yet.
Legally, they can do whatever they want with our funds
because we said they could
whenever we agreed to be a part of this project.
What they are saying is that they know what's best for us
and they're removing our right to withdraw our funds.
And like I said, I'm really perplexed
when it comes to this
because all these audits you did
and trying to prove to us that you have the funds
to pay out investors and removing that option
to me is kind of a paradox.
And the biggest thing I'm really hoping for
for this point going forward from the YieldNodes team,
that they do video updates instead of these emails.
These are very serious topics
and they're just sending out emails,
which can be totally misconstrued or elaborated on,
because I feel like I'm asking some pretty simple questions.
This isn't rocket science,
and the questions I brought to the table need answers.
So, that's why I wanna know,
you watching, what questions do you have?
And if you're interested in seeing my questions answered
as well as possibly yours,
be sure to subscribe,
because I'm going to try and get someone
from the YieldNodes team on if they want.
And if not, I really just hope they do
video messages from here on out,
because I'm just not happy with how this has been handled.
But yeah, guys, as always,
thanks for watching and until next time.