If you really want to understand Bitcoin, cyrptocurrency and blockchain there are only three channels that are really worth watching, unless you have more time and want to learn even more. I am not personally involved in any of these channels. I do have some (modest) investments in cryptocurrency and so my bias is that I want to get as much information as possible to protect and grow my investments. I have been watching various YouTube channels over the past three months and these are the ones that I have found to be most useful.

#1 #DataDash

This cryptocurrency oriented channel is the with the highest number of subscribers at 263K (yes, that's high in this world). Nicholas Merten is a down-to-earth well-spoken young man who is very knowledgeable about trading but even more so is a great researchers and reporter of interesting technologies. Nicholas did a ton of work creating a series of trading tips that will allow you to understand crypto. He's also covered a whole number of coins analyzing their fundamentals. In fact Data Dash is much more about telling you what the coin is about to let you judge if you think your investments could grow in the long-term.

What's Merten's secret? He's a great speaker. He's got his material organized and he sticks to his guns and remains honest even when he makes mistakes. For example, he made a video at one point, in which he looked really distressed confessing that he received money from Substratum for promoting their videos. This was earlier in his career and he did say that he was really positive about their technology. I personally thought his comments were genuine and I think his other followers did as well, so I would say he's worth watching and trustworthy.

#2 #Doug Polk Crypto

Coming with 153k subscribers, Doug Polk is a former(?) poker player who has made his career as a youtuber by making videos about his poker-playing adventures. What Polk does is report on the most recent news and events as they happen. He was one of the first youtubers I saw who really went out on a limb to call out Bitconnect as a scam. If you had listened to him when he published his video you could have gotten out and avoided the huge crash. Doug is honest and open about his investments letting you know where he stands.

The refreshing thing about Doug's channel is his humerous tone, excellent delivery and great video editing skills. He basically just makes funny videos but helps you learn about the news and take things into perspective. Doug doesn't just cover the news, but he also analyzes it. Doug is an investigator who looks into stories and delivers them in an entertaining manner. If you want to smile and understand why the market is taking a dip or laugh at an ongoing scam, watch Doug Polk. Polk is a co-founder of the New site, Coin central although it isn't clear exactly what his role was in the founding as the aforementioned article was all I found when searching his name on the site. I believe he may be only a promoter, though that's not to consider that against him.

Polk has mentioned at some point that he never takes money from various coins asking him to promote him. Obviously they would be quite interested considering the number of subscribers he has and he said that he's never taken any of that money because he "doesn't need to." Hmm... I wonder what exactly he means by that. Is Polk rich? Having mentioned that Polk is certainly fun to watch and he doesn't try to sell you anything, which I really appreciate.

#3 #Ivan on Tech

Ivan Liljeqvist is another one of the three young men who make lots of YouTube videos to help you better understand cryptocurrencies. Liljeqvist 's twist is that he is a "programmer," I put that into quotes because it sounds a bit cliché. I mean that's how he describes himself, but I would describe him is a very technically inclined and somewhat averagely talented (not my words, he actually said this in one of his videos) developer who has been into Crypto for quite a while. Ivan has just under 130k subscribers, which is no small feat.

Liljeqvist 's videos include interviews with some of the coolest people out there such as Andres Antonopolous (one of the highest regarded blockchain experts in this space) and David Sønstebø (one of the founders of IOTA).

Ivan has also recently launched an "academy" which he will be glad I mentioned since he is selling access to his online course which explains cryptocurrencies. Me, personally, I prefer to do my own research and educate myself, but I'm likely an exception so it might be worth checking out. Ivan should probably be paying me a commission if you're reading this, but since he's not, I'm going to be about what I think about his curriculum, which is that about 50% of is just too simplistic and can be learned just from watching a bunch of YouTube videos. The other 50% does contain a bunch of material that goes over my head, but precisely for that reason I don't care about it. My conclusion about the course: Well, it's an introduction course so you might find it interesting if you're a beginner. As for the cost, $189 to me is absolutely outrageous, but it may be of interest for you. Judge for yourself. I'm not for against, but only trying to inform my readers about what's out there. I will be honest though, any channel that tries to peddle anything makes me have reservations. This is something that Ivan is selling, however, his channel is great and I recommend it if you want to learn more about the technology.

#4 #Box Mining

Box Mining has 174K subscribers and is a channel that I am personally subscribed to especially because Box Mining regularly publishes experts and famous people in the space. Content that you will regularly find on this channel are conferences and creators speaking to the public. For example, if you are interested in NEO, you will find some videos published by the creators on this channel. You also know that this channel is more or less legitimate is that you will find the name of the channel posted in the conferences with other sponsors.

You will also often hear updates by Michael with comments on what is happening on the market. But personally, I have not really heard any dramatic insights from Michael personally despite his intelligence and knowledge. In addition, Michael, himself, has done some interesting interview with the highly regarded, Cardano creator, Charles Hoskins, which went on for a whopping 3 hours and 17 minutes, which I lasted through myself and kept entertained by Hoskins and Michael's engagement such as his question about why Hoskins had so many giraffes in the background.

In addition to covering the news, with some useful insights, doing quite good interviews and covering conferences, Michael also does an "In a nutshell" series, which I personally did not find to be that useful. I felt that the coverage was rather superficial and most of the information could be obtained by reading the project's website for about 5 minutes, so I lost interest after watching a few of these.

What else is out there?

I'm going to mention several channels that I have a few small reservations about and I'll mention them.

#SnipersTube

This is an interesting channel with 38K subsribers that focuses on technical analysis, that is understanding and making predictions based on charts. The author, Naeem Al-Obaidi, is quite intelligent about market analysis and has created several resources for his followers such as a Discord channel.

My reservartions about Al-Obaidi is that he really very rarely looks into the technology of the currencies out there. In other words, if you ever invest based on his analysis, you're just gambling. However, if you've done your research and find a technology that looks very interesting to you, I would check out this channel to get an idea about whether it is the right moment to invest or whether it's worth waiting.

The other reservation about Al-Obaidi is that he is constantly promoting an exclusive channel on his discord only available to paid subscribers. For example, on Patreon [Al-Obaidi] (https://www.patreon.com/snipers) has posts that are only available to $50+ subscribers. I have never taken a look at this paid advice and could not possibly evaluate it in that regard. However, anyone selling investment advice (or even "personal opinion") is, in mind, not particularly trustworthy because that person is likely to be telling you what you want to hear since you're paying him or her and is not responsible to anyone for anything he/she says.

Otherwise, Al-Obaidi is interesting to watch and his market analysis seems to be quite good. Although, me personally have witnessed him lose as much money as many of us in the market dip on February 2, 2018. He also rarely goes back to his previous analysis to confirm his predictions and he focuses his videos on viewers requests during live streams. So it could be your chance to get a bit of market analysis for a coin you are very interested in.

#Crypto Crush

This channel focuses on ICOs. Some of the ICOs that they covered have been extremely succesful, but even a broken clock strikes true twice a day. One of the most successful ICOs recently being ICON, I went back and watched their video covering it 4 months ago. Most of their perspective is good and their outlook was positive, which turned out to be true for the project.

What gives me the greatest reservations about this channel is the team behind it. While Victoria comes off as a professional speaker there is a team of people behind everything she reports. The team is outlined in the back page. In every video they state that they do not make any money from covering the ICOs and that it is just their personal opinion.

But just as I am suspicious of anyone who tries to sell me something I cannot for the life of me come to trust someone who says he/she receives nothing for their work. Everyone has a bias and an angle. That is not how this world works! Forgive my cynicism, but if you decide to take this channel at their word... well I believe that it is my duty to say you should not do so as you should not take anything on the Internet on face value.

All the other channels I have promoted have shown some kind of motive or angle, or at least failed to completely hide their angle. I distrust this channel because I cannot figure out their motives. I also want to see the other team members on video, otherwise it feels soulless and just feed my distrust. Having said that, the information seems fair if you do your own research. I am mentioning this channel because it is useful, with 23K subcribers it is doing well. But until I find out more about it I cannot fully get behind it as a useful source of regular information.