For the group of popular self-styled YouTube finance gurus Creators Agency represented, the sponsorship deals to promote FTX to their millions of followers were highly lucrative.
Kevin Paffrath, a 30-year-old YouTube star with 1.85 million followers to his real estate and financial tip page Meet Kevin, says he was paid $2,500 every time he mentioned FTX in one of his videos. And he believes he had one of the smaller deals with the crypto exchange; others have claimed six-figure deals with the firm.
“If I could go back in time, I would undo it all in a heartbeat. We failed here,” Paffrath said by phone from a cruise with his family. “Everybody was fooled.”
Paffrath and other prominent finance influencers have posted apology videos and scrubbed their YouTube channels of clips in which they sang the praises of the company and its 30-year-old boy wonder founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. Paffrath says his FTX deal only made up about 3% of his total income in the last year.
Source: My bad: The YouTube financial influencer network paid to pump FTX – MarketWatch
