PewDiePie Shamelessly Shills TRON and Ponzi Blockchain DLive

by
Ryan Smith
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Follow on:

• PewDiePie’s credibility is in question after he shamelessly plugged a rather dubious cryptocurrency project
• DLive claims to be blockchain-based but their proprietary currency has some major issues
• If you blindly trust everything that Felix Kjellberg says you need to re-evaluate your priorities

Swedish digital influencer Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg is almost certainly not short of cash. But that didn’t stop the YouTube superstar from shilling a rather sketchy cryptocurrency project via his channel this week.

A recent video ‘Designs that will make you MAD!’ begins with a vomit-inducing advertising jingle that even Kjellberg can’t pull off:

All you need to do is click link in the description to join. Wow. But Felix who BitTorrent? BitTorrent is the biggest decentralized peer-to-peer filesharing network in the world. Powered by TRON blockchain.

As Kjellberg himself explains, this “ad within a video that has adds in it” exists to “celebrate” DLive joining the BitTorrent family.

For context, BitTorrent recently announced that DLive will be joining its ecosystem. BitTorrent is owned by the TRON Foundation and its charismatic leader Justin Sun who acquired it back in 2018.

So What’s the Big Deal About DLive?

Well, let’s back up for a second and take a deeper look into the platform. DLive alleges to be a decentralized streaming platform powered by its very own ‘cryptocurrency’, the Lino.

Part of DLive’s appeal is that streamers earn most of their earnings while blockchain stakeholders take a small cut. Unfortunately, there are two problems with this approach:

1. Creators get paid in Lino’s, or Lemon’s, or something?
2. How exactly does DLive make any money?

The Lino is basically DLive’s proprietary currency, meaning there isn’t a market outside of the platform for them. You can’t buy or sell on your favorite exchange because the only way they move is through a third party. Or in my case, not at all, because the system was apparently down for maintenance:

I find it humorously ironic that they’ve called the associated tokens ‘Lemons’. And as for how they make money I’ll let this excellently-researched piece speak for itself:

The only vaguely good point out of all of this is that Kjellberg’s motives probably aren’t entirely selfish. Everyone knows about Google’s devious censorship and demonetization schemes.

As the video above explains, Pewds likely just wants a decent alternative to the slimy corporate he’s been in bed with for the past ten years. And as for the sponsor behind all this malarkey, Justin Sun is, by now, well-versed in riding the TRON hype train.

I Don’t Trust PewDiePie and Neither Should You

At this point, I can’t fathom why the PewDiePie fan club would trust anything this guy has to say. On more than one occasion the ‘internet sensation’ has falsely claimed that he was going to ditch YouTube for greener pastures of the blockchain kind.

More recently he even announced that he would be taking a break from the platform in early 2020 for some much need R and R, but for real this time. I guess he just couldn’t help himself on New Year’s day… and every day after that.

To go on air and publicly claim that:

DLive actually rewards you guys for engaging with creators which other sites don’t do that.

is either disingenuous or completely ignorant. But hey, what do I know? Maybe DLive fans can use all those lemons to make digital lemonade.