Killa has made a career out of revealing the dark underbelly of the online World however it's not every day that you get to see a popular YouTube sponsor deprive thousands of people of life savings my wife and I our family has 18,000 uh in yada that we can't get out over $60,000 Frozen up in yada $5,440 6 Frozen in yada what's even more surprising is that it all could have been avoided please help never should have listened to Graham Stefan I wonder if he knew things were looking bad that's why he stopped promoting it hi
I'm the internet Anarchist I create weekly YouTube documentaries and today we'll be looking into the abrupt collapse of a once beloved YouTube sponsor yodada savings a YouTube sponsor that promised to help viewers with a no lose Lottery but inevitably became a worse option than not saving at all sponsorships on YouTube have always been a double-edged sword on one side creators get a chance to promote a worthwhile product that would benefit their viewers on the other hand some creators up to push products that prey on their viewers this is a pattern that coffeezilla is very good
at exposing Jake makes these videos exposing scams but then often uses the same tactics of the scam to then pitch you like a sponsor that's in the same Lane like for example he'll tell you that lotteries are predatory lotteries are predatory they play on our psychology to suck a St of our hard-earned money but then in that same video he'll sell you a quote no lose lottery play the no lose Lottery by pausing the video and clicking the link below that's clip was from coffee zilla's the most evil business in the world video which called
out Jak train for Shilling predatory products to his viewers coffeezilla didn't know it yet but yod's no lose Lottery system was going to cause more damage than any sponsor he covered in that video but that begs the question what is Yoda where did they come from and how did they end up on coffee zilla's radar again if you were anywhere near the YouTube Finance Community between July 2020 and 2023 then you would have likely heard of Yoda savings what if Lottery psychology could be used to incentivize you to save money and build wealth instead of
keeping you poor well that's where y comes in a savings account that pays you interest and prizes giving you a chance to win $10 million every single week back then the premise behind Yoda was that their platform offered a fun but safe and easy way to save more money y would offer users tickets in the lottery after they deposited a certain amount of money now with that one ticket you go ahead and select seven numbers and if you do get some correct numbers out of that whole Lottery system you actually make some money but if
you get all those sevens numbers correct including the Y number you can actually win $10 million in addition to y's 2% annual interest rate playing their lottery every week could theoretically yield an extra 2% which was significantly higher than what most American Banks offer they were essentially offering a priz link savings system which was popular in the UK but it only made legal in the US around 2015 when it came to securing the fund saved Yoda users received an FDIC Insurance of up to $250,000 while the lottery numbers were picked by a third-party insurance company
however since Yoda wasn't a real bank they had to get these benefits by working with certified Banks Yoda was only a financial technology company that managed users funds and didn't necessarily hold assets it was actually the banks they worked with that held the funds while that system isn't normally a problem it becomes very important later in the video for now Yoda's plan to get more people to save through their risk-free Lottery system was working very well with it feeling like World War I could be approach ing at any moment there's never been a better time
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that being said let's get back into the video at the end of 2020 Yoda had received over $30 million in deposits and by 20121 they acquired tens of millions of dollars in Venture Capital the waves Yoda made in the finance world would eventually find their way to YouTube as many creators made videos analyzing the potential returns of having a yta savings account while the reviews for yta were mostly positive some creators saw enough potential value in that company that they became Angel Investors what's up you guys it's Graham here so through a weird Twist of
events I just bought a bank on the 20th of September 2020 Graham Stefan uploaded a video titled just bought a bank which detailed his experience with yodada savings as both a customer and investor from the perspective of a customer Graham went over a few fundamental questions about Yoda savings like How likely are you to receive the advertis interest rate from a savings account standpoint averaging higher than a and half% return right now is incredible especially when you consider that even the best high interest rate savings accounts right now are paying 1% and the majority of
banks are well below that another question was how the chances of winning are affected by the number of people who join the platform since the prize pool is spread among more people and of course this kind internet strange Mark calculated that the probability of your interest rate is boosted on average by 1110th each week depending on how many people you bring on but here's the thing the more people that join the app the lower the average interest rate becomes another question was about what it feels like participating in a lottery with friends and family after
the first drawing just one day after I signed up for the app I thought it was so cool and I also wanted those bonus 100 tickets that I got my girlfriend to sign up I got my assistant Jack to sign up and I also got my dad to sign up and shortly after it became the 600 p.m. event where all of us would compare our numbers with each other and see who matched what and finally the other question was the security measures that both protect Yoda and the consumer funds for anyone wondering they are FDIC
insured up to $250,000 through evolve Bank and Trust so yada never actually holds your money evolve Bank and Trust does this is very similar to how other cash management accounts use your money for example Robin Hood uses Sutton Bank and many other Banks do something similar to hold your asset I'm sure there might be some skepticism around how do we know these prizes are ripped what if this a dollar setup gr and to make sure this stays 100% above board after some research all the prizes are picked and paid out by a third party insurance
company on the consumer side of things Graham was generally on the side of being cautious since the company was still in its early stages and interest rates might not be the same for very long but from the perspective of an angel investor Graham was more optimistic well unb notes to me as sebie asked if I was interested in investing in this company as an angel investor and taking a small piece of ownership during one of their first rounds of funding so I decided to take a very close look in the company its Founders and their
business model to see if this is something I could get behind that's when the research started and the business model behind it is pretty interesting they're based off the report that 40% of Americans are unable to cover a $400 emergency expense yet they spend on average $1,000 a year in the lottery so yata aims to bridge that Gap by incentivizing people to save more money through a priz link system that makes putting money away exciting the positive psychological and financial impact of y's priz linked savings on people who were addicted to Lottery was also discussed
as Graham cited it as one of the reasons he was in investing Studies have shown that prizing savings accounts actually encourage people to save more money because psychologically it's a lot more appealing to have the small chance at earning a lot of money than the guaranteed chance at earning very little and for someone with $400 earning 8% on their money which works out to be $3.20 per year is not as exciting as saving that $400 and then having the small chance at earning all the way up to $10 million gram saw Yoda is a win-win
situation for everyone involved especially the customer from his perspective Yoda was making the idea of saving more money engaging ultimately introducing more people into the financial practice at the end of the day it's all about learning how to make saving money appealing to an audience who ordinarily would not save money and this fits that perfectly while also giving you a fun spin on things and also paying you a higher interest rate than you would be getting from almost any other bank even if that means they have to pay a high amount of Interest upfront to
you to get you as a customer to me that's just a normal cost of customer acquisition while this initial vision for y worked on a small scale things would only get more complicated and risky for everyone involved by the 9th of October 2021 Graham uploaded a follow-up video on Yoda savings titled I brought a bank that's losing money to give viewers a more in-depth perspective on the company so about a year ago I did the unthinkable I made a substantial Angel investment in a small startup bank that pays people to use it it quickly became
the number one most trending Financial app on the Google Play Store over $3.5 million wor the prizes were paid out across more than 250,000 users 60% of them open the app every single day and now could have a valuation in excess of $200 million but I wish this story were really just as simple as that because there have been some considerable issues that I need to address after expressing his initial concerns of Yoda Graham addressed the concerns about the legitimacy and inner workings of the company by clearly differentiating it from a Ponzi scheme but it
became evident that the entire aspect of a prize-based savings account is enough to raise a suspicion that it's got to be rigged it has to be a scam because it sounds like a Ponzi scheme This is highly illegal it's blatant fraud and if yat Bank was a Ponzi scheme posting a video about it on YouTube and risking everything I ever have worked for would have been the stupidest thing I ever could have done however Graham's positive outlook on Yoda didn't stop him from shedding light on the noticeable issues with the platform like the reducing interest
rate lack of customer support and basic banking functionality there were also some issues that I would like to address because it wouldn't be fair for me to talk about something that I'm personally invested in without giving it an objective review now that I've had a year to see how things have unfolded at first as I expected in my previous video it became too expensive to pay a high interest rate to bank account Turners like myself who move large amounts from bank to bank in order to game the system and I saw how much they were
initially paying which is over 2 1 12% on all amounts I decided to keep six figures of cash on the app because that was four times higher than what I was getting paid at Ali bank but after a few months it became apparent that the majority of high balances never interacted with the app at the end of the day Yoda was a growing startup and like many startups there were growing pains but Graham wanted to look past that instead Graham focused more on what the platform would be down the line there's a lot of potential
to continue expanding into different products with startups like this profit is nice but growth is even better I'm not able to get into too many specifics here but I will say that there is a credit card in the works and incorporating some cryptocurrency so stay tuned at the end of the day it's really about reaching a new audience who ordinarily would not have the desire to save money even though it's not profitable yet they have been consistently growing even without me mentioning them which is also the reason why I have not mentioned them in a
year in the short term Graham's B on Yoda paid off as more users flock to the platform daily and they were able to increase their marketing efforts to grow their numbers even faster as a result YouTube videos sponsored by yodada became more common between 2021 and 2023 the more time you waste not using yada the more money you're losing out on so get started by clicking the link below play the no lose Lottery by pausing the video and clicking the link below we're proud to have Yota sponsoring this video If Yoda kept to their initial
vision of raising the number of American citizens actively saving then maybe things would have continued on their current upward trajectory but unfortunately yod's rapid growth incentivized management to make a few alterations to that Vision the changes started out small with the inclusion of casino type mini games like Pachinko and Rolette these games required users to bet their existing lottery tickets to win more which prayed on the psychology of recovering G lers as with every Casino the expected payout rate would always be less than 100% which means users who played long enough would eventually lose all
their tickets the co-founders understood the psychology Behind These mechanics and the fact that were now directly taking advantage of it was a sign for Worse to come Yoda's lottery ticket system became less profitable for users after they added Yoda cash which altered the $25 to one ticket mechanic reading Yoda cash is replacing tickets as a way to play all games $1 y cash is redeemable for $1 Yoda customers could see the writing on the wall with one stating this update just made me lose all hope in Yoda never liked the ticket idea but whatever now
with the tickets being 10 times more expensive I'm truly about to pull out completely if only there was a bank system with buckets that's about the only useful feature left on Yoda by now it was obvious a good portion of Yoda's users had the desire to jump ship to a more stable Bank withdrawing one savings from yod would have been a logical decision since the original premise was all bit forgotten but unfortunately that wouldn't even be a viable option in the coming months as things were about to get a whole lot worse on the 17th
of May 2024 a YouTuber named P TV V2 published a video titled I got scammed the a bank situation to raise awareness for an ongoing issue he had with the platform you guys read the title of this video correctly and it's not a joke I wish this was a joke people I figured let me make the best of it potentially inform some of you guys of this situation maybe save some of you guys and just really shed light on this whole thing for the first few minutes of the video people have recounted the decision and
events that led him to join Yoda with the main driving force being Graham's video I used to watch a lot of Finance uh YouTubers over the past few years recently eh maybe not as much but Graham stefen was a leader in the field and 3 years ago he dropped a video titled I just bought a bank rewatching Graham's video forced pbla to reconsider his choice to use y over a Traditional Bank like just watching this back now knowing what I know I should have just been like dude I just want a regular Standard Bank but
honestly this was fun back in the day you put money in you get tickets you make some money and honestly like sometimes it would be good the drive home how dead the situation was P pulled up a list of supported evolved Bank partners and Yoda wasn't on that list list of evolve Bank Partners Marquetta MasterCard Melo Mercury prize Pool Step stripe taba Visa notice yada is not on this list anymore guys despite his unpleasant experience with Yoda paa didn't blame Graham for what happened with the company so he's a partial owner I don't know if
that is still standing currently but I'm not holding him to blame however yod's sudden collapse didn't come without warning as people are shed notification he received a few days prior suggesting he withdraw his funds if you would like to withdraw your funds now you can do so on the yada app please note there's a $110,000 limit if you have more than $10,000 in your account BL okay we apologize for this inconvenience so I didn't think much of it I thought you know whatever over the course of the 3 years the structure has changed a lot
sadly payal wasn't able to withdraw in time and found out at the worst time possible I need to pull my money out I've tried making the deposit trying to just withdraw all my money into an actual Brook and mortar bank that I have and uh I received this email it says we are currently experiencing difficulties with Payment Processing wires and debit and credit cards due to outages with synapsis brokerage Bank processors we are currently working on a resolution and we will let you know uh once it's resolved y would make a post addressing their customers
explaining what was going on and at the end of the post Yoda told their customers that they didn't have control over the Frozen funds instead they placed responsibility on evolve reading ultimately is up to evolve to restore card services and lineage or evolve or another processing Bank to provide a Services we in contact with Regulators to expedite a resolution since this is unacceptable as a result of this technical mishap tens of thousands of people no longer had access to money they worked so hard to save and were given no timeline of when they'll get their
funds back by the 3rd of June 2024 coffeezilla uploaded a video on the collapse of yodada and gave a voice to the affected users as well as calling out the creators who promoted the company today we're talking about a bank promoted by YouTubers that's now become a casino and users can't get their money out after giving an overview of what y to worked how it works and who promoted it coffeezilla presented an interesting conversation he had with the company's CEO Adam moles I reached out to the CEO and he told me yada is not actually
gambling quote we decided to Pivot the business into sweep Stakes earlier this year sweep Stakes is not gambling we worked extensively with lawyers in the space to build out the program now I don't know which lawyer told Blackjack isn't gambling but it's time to get your money back ironically Adam would outright ask coffeezilla for help but he instead offered advice to both Yoda and to the creators who took their sponsorships he responded asking me for help quote you can make your own moral Judgment of whatever you want that's fine but the issue that matters is
that our customers haven't been able to access their funds for nearly 3 weeks I think you can help and honestly he's right I do want to help yata's customers not getting their money but I can't ignore that yat is a savings app that became a casino the exact thing they were fighting and that's disgusting two YouTubers brought people into a financial product that is now broken and rather than address it most of them have gone radio silent given the complexity of the situation kov Zilla pointed out why he didn't hold creators responsible for what happened
but stated that they had a role to play even after the collapse this is the reason I hold Financial YouTubers to a higher standard overwhelmingly I find them to be more influential although I have to say again I don't hold them or anyone else personally responsible I hold them all irresponsible for promoting Financial products coffeezilla continued the second half of the video by discussing the more technical side of y's predicament which was an even more entangled mess since early May many finex including yat and Juno and many others have had all their user funds Frozen
up to 200,000 accounts are affected and it's for many reasons that surprised users see most people saw these companies like yada as Banks remember Graham Stefan even said I bought a bank I just bought a bank but this isn't quite accurate to fully get his point across coffee would bring on an industry expert to explain what was going on what actually has gone wrong here so the sort of approximate cause was on Saturday May 11th uh synapse which is this technology middleware provider or banking as a service provider revoked evolve Banks access to what in
the courtt filings is being referred to as the dashboard uh which is basically synapses it systems uh including actual Ledger information and so when synapse revoked access to that information on Saturday May 11th evolve functionally Froze all of those programs by ceasing to process payments they would also delve into why the FDI State insurance policy wasn't going into effect now what is FDIC insurance and what does it do it protects depositors and users in the event that a bank fails a bank has not failed here uh and so there is no direct role for the
FDIC to step in essentially user funds were caught up in a dispute between companies that couldn't decide who word what and to whom with both parties pointing the finger at each other all in evolves control we are doing everything we can to release funds meanwhile evolve says synapses records are wrong quote recent ledgers and data do not align with the actual movement of funds in and out of evolve basically someone is lying or even worse doesn't know what the truth is and this isn't a disagreement about a few pennies it's $150 million being argued about
naturally viewers who followed these Financial suggestions and potentially lost savings worth tens of thousands of dollars were furious with many openly sharing their grievances on Reddit with posts reading investigate Graham Stefan about his investment in Yoda and also he was the one who promoted Yoda on his YouTube and got me into this mess it was also promoting FX as he already reported it before it burned to the ground as well as please help never should have listened to Graham Stefan I wonder if he knew things were looking bad and that's why he stopped promoting it
although there was a lot of hate going around for Graham and other yada sponsored channels some creators were trying to bridge the gap by giving a different perspective on the 9th of June 2024 meet Kevin gave us thoughts on the situation from his and Graham's perspective an easy thing a lot of finex do that try to innovate uh so to speak in the finance space is they partner with depository Banks and as a result they're able to offer products or apps or services that may not otherwise exist below the video a viewer would comment a
very good Summary of why Graham was receiving so much backlash with a comment reading people are targeting Graham because he was the reason why thousands of people signed up for yada and he has yet to come out and say anything about it even if it's a hey guys I don't know what's going on but as soon as I find out something I'll let you know say something anything yod's original concept for a safe way to save money while encouraging people with the hopes of winning huge sums worked well in the beginning sadly the desire for
rapid growth and profitability pushed the company management to abandon that ideal a decision users openly hated couple that with the recent holdon transactions and was only a matter of time before users began to perceive Yoda as just another Shady casino app this dark perception inevitably bleeds into the reputations of traders that Associated themselves with the company the Nega ativity was only Amplified by the lack of communication and updates viewers received from creators however does that mean YouTube is were to blame for what happened well it's not exactly clear-cut YouTubers are responsible for screening their sponsorships
but viewers should also do some research on these products especially when it comes to financial products while no amount of research could have predicted the eventual fate of Yoda we can only hope the hardworking individuals that saved their money have it return to them as soon as possible again big thanks to War Thunder for sponsoring today's video be sure to click my Link in the description to play on Xbox PlayStation or PC today and if you're new or haven't played in 6 months you'll get many rewards such as premium tanks silver lions and 7 Days
of Premium time coffeezilla also exposed one of YouTube's worst Tech channels click the video on the screen to find out more
