Kyle Chass, a Bitcoin OG whom many in the crypto community know from his popular YouTube channel over the years, has one Google warning left.
One more strike and his YouTube channel, and the result of years of daily grinding, could vanish forever.
When it gets deleted, there's no appeal to bring the account back, Chass tells Magazine.
You don't have any appeal process. It's just deleted. All your videos are gone, he says.
Bitcoin influencer Davinci Jeremie, who has 857,000 followers on X, saw his entire channel permanently removed in 2020. Despite backlash from the crypto community, YouTube never reinstated it.
It's a nerve-wracking moment for Chass, who's been hit with two YouTube strikes since August after over five spotless years on the platform. In that time, he's produced more than 1,300 crypto-focused videos and built a community of over 171,000 subscribers.
Chass Says, "It Was Really Shocking"
It was really shocking to us, the Texas-based crypto entrepreneur says, after receiving his first-ever warning in August. We didn't feel like we had done or said anything different than we had in the countless videos before, the 35-year-old adds.
Only two days after the warning, YouTube took down one of his videos and handed Chass his first strike, which prevented him from uploading a video for seven days.
It's really hard mentally to deal with that one-week suspension, Chass says, explaining that he is used to posting content daily and worried his audience will forget about him.
So you're probably wondering what kind of outrageous views Chass has suddenly started sharing to land himself in YouTube's bad books. Well, so is he.
Chass's videos see him talking about the crypto market and chatting with people like BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes and Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz. He doesn't shy away from a clickbaity title here and there, like "24 hours before the biggest pump of 2025."
But that is still within the rules and should not get Chass flagged. He claims he has had no clear explanation from the platform, so he has been left to play detective himself.
A Video on AAVE May Have Been the Problem, Chass Says
His team created a custom AI bot trained on YouTube's community guidelines to scan his scripts to detect how he may have contravened the rules.
While he's not 100% sure, the bot flagged a video with Chass talking about using the DeFi platform Aave to borrow against his Bitcoin.
Chass didn't want to part with his Bitcoin at the depths of the bear market, but he did want to buy a few villas in Thailand. So, instead of selling, he borrowed against his holdings.
Those villas ended up putting Koh Phangan, an island in Thailand, on the global crypto map. Many in the crypto industry know the place well, after Chass built a crypto utopia atop a hill overlooking Haad Thong Lang Bay, with sweeping views of the Gulf of Thailand.
He struck a deal to buy the resort for 17 million baht (around $510,000 at the time) and took over 35 villas. Many interesting things happened.
But YouTube may have considered it a dodgy tax avoidance scheme, according to the AI. The GPT said, likely in that video, what flagged it was that I was trying to tell people how to illegally not pay taxes, or giving advice on how to not pay taxes, Chass says, which he denies:
I wasn't. I was stating a matter of fact, right? I mean, it wasn't; there was no legal advice there.
While YouTube may not always provide detailed reasons for issuing a strike, you still have the option to appeal the decision and request a second review. They give you a chance to appeal it, but also take a course or training that helps you understand the kind of things that they look at under those community guidelines violations, Chass says.
They tell you that it is supposed to be education, to help avoid those things in the future, but it wasn't helpful at all, Chass says.
Who is Kyle Chass?
Thankfully, Chass has more to his CV than just being a crypto YouTuber. He's also a successful venture capitalist who has been building, investing, and experimenting in the crypto space since 2012, before it was even called an industry.
In 2013, he launched World Super Lotto, the world's first global lottery built on Bitcoin.
A year later, he went all in, selling everything to stack Bitcoin before taking on a full-time role as chief operating officer of Credits. In 2016, Chass co-founded The Review Agency, a SaaS venture focused on online reputation management.
He has become known as a smart money man, backing infrastructure and protocol projects like Kraken, Coinbase, Bitfinex, and RNDR.
In 2018, he set up Master Ventures, a blockchain advisory and investment firm.
Chass Won't Go Broke If YouTube Bans Him
So if YouTube bans Chass, it isn't going to put him out on the street. He got into Bitcoin early enough that by the time it hit $1,000 in 2016, he realized he'd probably never need to work another day in his life.
But the YouTube channel isn't about the money for Chass, but the passion. Chass says he has poured a tremendous amount of effort and work into this and is preparing to fight to the bitter end, taking heart from London Real TV Host Brian Rose's experience.
He had over 2 million subscribers and a lot of traction. At the time, his channel got permanently deleted, and he spent, I think, two or three years, and I can't imagine the expense for the legal side of things, but he just got his channel back, like, last week, he says.
So I imagine that route is always possible, but that's a crazy headache, he says.