TikTok Crypto Influencers Are Teaching A New Generation of Investors

On March 22, 2020, the day before the United Kingdom announced its first Covid-19 lockdown, Joel Davies joined TikTok, excited by the buzz surrounding it. He was unaware that doing so would lead him toward life-changing money. Davies, 23, had been interested in cryptocurrency since the age of 16, but apart from a small investment in Bitcoin, his curiosity remained on the back burner while he finished his studies in film, television and digital production at Bath Spa University. After graduating in 2019, Davies moved back into his parents’ house in South Wales, stacked savings from his marketing job and, in the evenings, logged on to a Discord server, a communication platform he discovered through Dennis Liu, 26, a leading crypto influencer on TikTok, who also goes by the name VirtualBacon.

“When I found VirtualBacon on TikTok, that spurred me more into investing and learning about [cryptocurrency],” says Davies. Liu’s down-to-earth style and emphasis on research and analysis stood out to Davies in a space that he saw as rife with shilling, scams and hyperbolic price targets. Aided by VirtualBacon’s Discord community and TikTok videos, Davies learned the basics of investing in crypto, including how to trade on centralized exchanges and create a digital wallet, then more advanced skills, such as how to analyze tokenomics and assess the fundamentals of a company. He made his first crypto investment a month into the U.K. lockdown. Over the course of a year, Davies says he transformed his initial investment of 2,500 GBP into nearly 100,000 GBP (about $3,548 into nearly $141,930).

Perhaps no other market is more susceptible to social media’s influence than cryptocurrency, where, for instance, a single tweet from Elon Musk can pump Dogecoin, a meme currency, to all-time highs or send Bitcoin spiralling. One TikTok user created a coin called SCAM (“Simple Cool Automatic Money”) as a joke and it grew to a $70 million market cap an hour after its release. It is currently at an approximately $850,000 market cap.

Newer, self-directed investors are more likely to put their money in riskier investments like cryptocurrency, in part because of the thrill, novelty and social cachet, according to a study commissioned by U.K. watchdog Financial Conduct Authority. Much of cryptocurrency’s buzz, the study found, is due to influencers and hype on social media. An informal coterie of crypto enthusiasts has recently flocked to TikTok because it represents the greatest potential to expand their audience, says Liu. And the audiences they are reaching likely skew young, according to an April survey from Pew Research Center that shows 48 percent of adults under age 30 say they use TikTok, compared to just 22 per cent of those ages 30 to 49. Scams—like meme economies in which online memes are treated like financial commodities and vice versa as well as pump-and-dump schemes—also run rife, according to some influencers on the platform.

“When I started doing crypto [videos] on TikTok, nobody was doing them,” Liu says. Liu’s first foray into crypto was mining Dogecoin—using computers to solve complex mathematical problems in order to introduce new coins into circulation—from his McGill University dorm room in 2014. In 2017, he had some extra cash he wanted to invest and crypto was what he knew best. “It’s a more risky playing field, but, in a weird way, that’s kind of more fair for someone that’s new—a younger audience,” he says. Liu’s most popular TikTok videos are timely analyses, he says, of major price shifts in Bitcoin and Ether, especially when they dip, and other highly traded crypto assets. “People on TikTok are often very new investors, so those types of videos do well,” he says. “It’s not just analysis, but a bit of reassurance to calm their minds in the volatile crypto market.” In his videos, his straightforward delivery, talking over a green screen that displays a coin’s chart or other information, is now a popular format on crypto TikTok.

CryptoWendyO, the TikTok username of a person who says she is a woman in her 30s and declined to give her real name, saying that she has experienced online harassment, makes four to eight TikTok videos a day, analyzing Bitcoin’s price movement, responding to questions in the comments or rounding up the top three daily news stories in crypto. Her most-watched video has over 500,000 views and details a simple investment strategy known as the “moon bag.” “The moon bag strategy is you pull out your initial investment once you’re in profit, and then you take your initial investment and roll it into another project,” she says. “Rinse and repeat.”

CryptoWendyO says she didn’t take TikTok seriously at first but was won over after Ben Armstrong, who goes by BitBoy Crypto, among the most popular crypto accounts with over 2.6 million TikTok followers, encouraged her to join. “TikTok is a great platform to get a large amount of information in a very short amount of time,” says CryptoWendyO. “I can get a lot more on a TikTok video than I can on a Twitter [thread], and more people are going to watch the TikTok.”

Lucas Dimos, 20, known on TikTok as TheBlockchainBoy, says he first heard of Bitcoin from his mom in 2017. “I came for the money, but I stayed for the tech,” he says, echoing a common refrain on crypto social media. Later, he started his own blockchain company, CryptoKnight, to develop an algorithmic trading bot and today runs a Discord server by the same name. Dimos joined TikTok on January 27, 2021 in the heat of the GameStop short squeeze. Since then, he has gained more than 210,000 followers.

A study by Paxful, a cryptocurrency trading platform, analyzed more than 1,200 videos from TikTok finance influencers and determined that one in seven videos misleads viewers by encouraging them to make investments without making clear the content is not meant to be taken as professional financial advice. The study did not conclude whether or not the videos intended to mislead. Dimos describes what he sees as an ecosystem of undisclosed paid promotions. “Developers will go to the influencer and say, ‘We want to give you $3,000 worth of this token—make a video, hype it up and then you can sell for a massive profit,’” he says. (Dimos and CryptoWendyO say they disclose all of the sponsors in their videos, per TikTok’s community standards. Liu did not respond to a request for comment about compensation and sponsorship.)

TikTok declined to comment for this article. Its community guidelines state, in part: “We remove content that deceives people in order to gain an unlawful financial or personal advantage, including schemes to defraud individuals or steal assets.”

Dimos and CryptoWendyO stay away from meme coins, which tend to be online jokes that are turned into cryptocurrencies, like Dogecoin. “By the time the videos circle TikTok’s algorithm, the coin is already pumped and dumped,” says CryptoWendyO. This happened on May 12 with Shiba Inu, a meme coin, which the coin’s website has nicknamed the “Dogecoin killer.” In part thanks to viral TikTok videos targeting investor FOMO—“fear of missing out”—in the wake of Dogecoin’s parabolic rise, $SHIB rocketed in price, increasing 25-fold within the beginning of May, until an approximately $1 billion sell-off by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, which he said was a donation to help fight Covid-19 in India, caused $SHIB and several other meme coins to plummet.

Dimos believes all the scamming—what insiders call “rug pulling”—that happens on TikTok in particular, not only takes advantage of new, vulnerable investors, but also tarnishes the image of cryptocurrency. “Every meme coin that exists today feels like a spit in the face to people like me who’ve worked for the professional blockchain industry,” he says.

After becoming an early and active member of VirtualBacon’s Discord server, which has over 20,000 members today, Davies recently joined VirtualBacon in an official capacity, serving as the content marketing lead for BaconDAO, or “decentralized autonomous organization.” Led by Liu, a community of expert contributors shares daily market analysis, picks for low-market-cap “gems” and other insights, while the community can vote on what topics Liu will cover in his TikTok videos, ask questions and chat about their trades. Although it’s not yet publicly listed, those who purchase and hold the $BACON currency will gain access to BaconDAO exclusive content.

TikTok has exposed a class of new investors to cryptocurrency, but for crypto influencers it is now becoming a feeder channel for other online platforms, like the BaconDAO community and Patreon, where many influencers monetize their Discord channels by charging for access. Young crypto investors seem to be particularly mercurial. In March 2021, one year and six figures later, Davies became bored by TikTok and deleted it.

The past five years have been good to stock-market investors. The S&P 500 index has climbed an annualised 12% during that period, outstripping the 9% annualised gain over the past 40 years. This year alone the index is up 6.9% as of April 26, tacking on to the 24% gain in 2023.

But signs are emerging that the stock market could be due for a breather. As of April 25, the S&P 500 went 133 trading days without a decline of at least 10%, according to PNC Institutional Asset Management. To be sure, that’s still short of the 172-day average since 1928. But the S&P 500 has jumped 24% in the past six months (about 180 days), which buttresses arguments for a correction.

What’s more, the multiyear ascent has arguably sent stocks to overvalued levels. The S&P 500’s forward price-to-earnings ratio—a gauge of market valuation based on earnings estimates for the next 12 months—registered 20 as of April 26, exceeding the five-year average of 19.1 and the 10-year average of 17.8, according to FactSet.

“A correction is certainly possible,” says Jack Ablin , chief investment officer at wealth-management firm Cresset Capital, pointing to the high valuations and the prospect that rate cuts will come later than expected thanks to inflation that has been higher than expected.

Given the danger of a stock-market correction, commonly defined as a 10% to 20% drop, how can investors guard the profits they have made in recent years?

Wait and see

Assuming you have a well-diversified portfolio and aren’t counting on the money from your stocks to finance an imminent expense, financial advisers say the best strategy is to hang tight.

Corrections generally don’t stick around long. Since 1985, declines between 10% and 20% for the S&P 500 have lasted only 97 days on average—three-plus months—according to a CFRA analysis of S&P data.

It then has taken the market an additional 101 days on average to recover the ground lost during the correction. So in about six months, investors tend to be back where they were before the correction.

“If there’s a shallow correction of 5% to 10%, we recommend riding it out,” says Karim Ahamed , an investment adviser at wealth-management firm Cerity Partners. “Eventually the market recovers. The idea of selling out and climbing back in is difficult to achieve. You’re more likely to stay on the sidelines with your losses crystallising.”

The S&P 500 did fall more than 5% in recent weeks, from March 28 to April 19.

Sell losers

Some people, though, simply find it impossible to do nothing if they fear a correction is looming. At the least, they want to protect the gains they have earned so far. What’s the most prudent way for them to reduce their market exposure?

Keep in mind that most actions you can take to guard your stock profits carry a cost. The easiest method, selling stocks, subjects you to capital-gains taxes unless you are selling from a tax-advantaged retirement account. That tax rate varies according to your income, but will likely be 15%.

One way to limit the burden is through tax-loss harvesting, says Amanda Agati , chief investment officer of PNC’s asset-management group. That is when you sell stocks at a loss, lowering your net capital gain. If you have any dogs in your portfolio—stocks with poor fundamentals—you can unload those.

If you do sell stocks, you could put the proceeds into a money-market fund for now, financial pros say. Many such funds yield 5% or more, far higher than rates over the past 15 years. Or if you want to increase the safety of your overall portfolio, you could put the money into safe government bonds. Three-year Treasury notes yield around 4.75%.

Play defence

If you are going to unload stocks, but don’t want to sell right away, you can put in a stop-limit sell order through your brokerage. That order can automatically sell your shares if they slide to a level you designate (they can go below it, too), protecting you from big drops.

Say you bought 100 shares of Tesla at $140, and they are now trading at $165. If you don’t want your profit to disappear in a downturn, you could enter a stop-limit sell order with your brokerage at $150 for some or all of your shares. Those shares can be sold if the price reaches $150, securing some of the gains.

You also might shift your holdings more toward defensive stocks, such as utilities and consumer-staple companies, which generally outperform during market downturns, says Michael Sheldon , executive director of wealth-management firm RDM Financial Group.

PNC’s Agati suggests an emphasis on quality stocks, those with high recurring revenues, strong and dependable profit margins, high cash flow and low debt. These stocks—such as AutoZone and Visa , she says—have lagged behind the leaders of the market’s surge over the past year.

Consider options

Advisers also suggest looking at “put” options to protect your stock gains. Puts give you the right but not the obligation to sell a security at a preset price by a preset deadline.

Note that we’re talking about a risk-reduction approach here, not the kind of risk-taking—to try to amplify returns— that has been rampant in the options market . The simplest strategy could be to purchase a put option on a market-index exchange-traded fund, such as one based on the S&P 500. You could buy puts on individual stocks rather than an index ETF, but that may get expensive and complicated as each option carries a purchase premium.

Here’s how the ETF strategy would work: First, buy an option that would let you sell the ETF at a price below the current one, protecting you from declines beneath that level. You wouldn’t have to sell the ETF, and you wouldn’t even have to own it. As the S&P 500 falls, the put option gains in value, and you can sell it.

Say on April 16 you wanted to protect 100 shares of SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) from a decline of more than 10%. With the ETF trading at $505 a share, you could buy an option that covers 100 shares for $1,050, or $10.50 a share. You’re paying a premium equal to 2% of your position.

The option’s expiration date is December, and its strike price is $455 a share, or 10% below the current value. The strike price is the price at which you could exercise the option. But generally you sell the option rather than exercising it, so you don’t have to dump any shares, especially if you don’t own them.

If the market doesn’t go down 10% by December, you let the option expire worthless, and you’re out the $1,050 you paid for it. If the market drops more than 10%, you can sell your option at a profit whenever you want until December.

While it might be more lucrative to sell it early, Ablin recommends holding until expiration if you’re using the option to protect your portfolio. “Think of it like homeowner insurance,” he says. “You pay a premium, like a deductible for insurance, and your coverage runs for a term.”

Keeping the option until expiration extends your coverage for the longest possible period.

By using options, you don’t have to sell any of your stocks, which are typically the best asset to generate strong long-term returns. “If you have the wherewithal to hold the S&P 500 for 10 years, your odds of making money are over 90%,” Ablin says.

TikTok Crypto Influencers Are Teaching A New Generation of Investors

An informal group of self-styled cryptocurrency advisors are using TikTok, Discord and other online platforms to reach nascent crypto investors.

The best course when stocks slide is for investors to stand pat, but ‘put’ options are one way to hedge against a drop and lock in some profits

Wait and see

Sell losers

Play defence

Consider options