RE: The Cryptoverse - Channel Update 2018 (Does anyone even care? 🤔)

I'm going to leave you a detailed response with serious information that I used to grow my YouTube channel because I can tell you have followed a similar process as I have in terms of observing others. I left some of this information for CryptoDaily in a previous video because he was experiencing a similar event (falling behind every other YouTuber). I've adapted it for you specifically. If I'm talking out of turn, I apologize - I am guessing based off your nature that this type of information is worth something to you though.

I spent some time analyzing a bunch of different YouTube channels to find what works vs. what doesn't work in terms of attracting eyes. From what I have discovered so far, this is the order of the most important elements for growing organically and internally to YouTube (note these two words):

The most important part is the title by far, which many content producers seem to undervalue substantially.
Second most important part is the content itself for longevity of views (you generate a longer tail of views the more "evergreen" your content is - unfortunately, news has the shortest tail).
Third most important is a clickable thumbnail.
Last is optimizing content for SEO purposes (writing smart descriptions, appropriate meta tags, etc).

You have one of the best voices in the space and I can tell you care greatly about production quality. There is no reason you shouldn't be bigger - people love listening to you. You are right that you don't need a webcam (although obviously I am biased since I don't use one either). Forgive me if I am stepping out of place here, but some thoughts on what could improve your visibility:

Implement more forward looking & succinct titles (news-based and historical oriented titles have been my worst performers consistently). Your titles are very busy - reminds me of Coin Mastery, who has also recently seen his growth become stunted despite initially being one of the fastest growers. This might mean reining in the content itself a little too and not always covering everything, so I'll leave that up to you but generally think limiting amount of info in one video is a good idea for organic growth.
Create thumbnails that are more instantaneously digestible. Your color contrast is often too low which makes them feel busy and difficult to immediately know what the video is about. Note you have about 3 seconds to leave an impression on someone when they scroll through suggested videos and their home page. High color contrast and text that really stands out (but doesn't conflict with the picture) goes a long way. The thumbnail you used for this video is perfect - simple and to the point, easy to grasp quickly but still visually appealing enough to click.
For your content with a long shelf-life (think content which is relevant for longer than a month), simplify the title (max of 60 characters - good rule of thumb in general) and put a lot of effort into thumbnail because you never know when YouTube will randomly decide to promote a video.

Believe it or not, the title and thumbnail is how I found this video - thumbnail looked really nice and the title grabbed my attention (partially because I can relate).

Obviously there is some content that tends to perform better regardless of optimization of above factors:

Price action analysis
Market Predictions
Detailed looks into "hyped" cryptocurrencies

Nothing you can do about that - just some types of content that is hot. I've seen a huge boost from covering these topics, even when I don't think the quality of the content is always the best. An even better example is Altcoin Buzz. He does limited to no editing and limited preparation for his videos plus the thumbnails are often hard to read (because his text doesn't blend well with picture), but his titles grab your attention and its content that is hot and timely. Note that this is just natural when the market is like this.

I've found the way I've achieved the bulk of my growth is from one video ("How the Bitcoin Bubble Will Pop"), which has likely contributed 25% of my subscribers or more. I don't know EXACTLY why the video blew up (note that I had 150 subscribers when I released it), but I suspect it is because I had an external funnel that drove roughly 15k views or so from Seeking Alpha & Medium. I also advertised on Reddit a lot, which is how my channel originally got any views at all. I had to rely on external media to get any views, but I think YouTube rewards you for bringing new viewers on the platform. Obviously not 100%, but I do think they like it. The video itself was much better than 99% of the stuff on my channel as it took over 20 hours to make and I plan on going back to this form of content soon because I think it has a much higher value-add to the field and much better growth potential.

The point is, most YouTubers explode due to one or two videos. That's all it takes. That's why I say it's so important that for the videos you think are great, put an hour+ into the title, thumbnail, smart descriptions (keywords loaded upfront), metatags, etc. I put at least an hour in for these things on all my videos, even my derpy market analysis videos, because you just never know when YouTube says "I like this one." Louis Thomas recently had this experience (see below). Notice how the base floor of views for his videos changed ever since? Same thing happened to me.

Derral Eves summed it up well... Channel Growth = One video. You don't know exactly when it'll be, but best you can do is set yourself up for success by increasing the probability of success. I got very lucky, but there was some planning (okay admittedly a lot) to get here. I obviously can't talk for others, but I can tell from this video you probably keep tabs on other YouTubers same way I do so thought I'd share my insights. Best of luck, you deserve all the best!