Shill or shilling is crypto slang for promoting bitcoin or an altcoin for your own benefit.
A person who does the shilling can be called a shill (and other things, too!).
Shills want to draw attention to a cryptocurrency in hopes of raising demand and ultimately driving up the price of the digital asset.
Many crypto influencers with status in the industry are looked down on once they start shilling every coin or token under the sun, regardless of the utility of the project or integrity of the company or team behind the project.
What makes shilling really bad is that shillers sometimes aren’t being completely honest with the public or their audience.
Shills try to come off as being legitimately interested in the specific cryptocurrency because of its utility or future benefit to the crypto ecosystem.
They act as if they’re simply doing their part to educate and inform the retail public, without payment from the company behind the project.
However, shillers are only motivated by the fact that they are being paid to do so.
Compensation can take the form of a flat fee paid directly to the shiller.
ICO or IDO discounted coins or presale tokens are examples of indirect payments made by the project team or some other 3rd party involved in marketing the project.
Shillers pump up a project through social media, their own bag of the project cryptocurrency increases in price due to the increased interest they helped drum up, and they sell a large part of their holdings for a profit, bringing down the price of the digital asset.