Listen carefully.... All influencers are using their position to get allocations or get paid in certain way. There is NO exception. If someone tell you something different he/she is lying (:or has 500 followers)

Of course, we have all conflicts of interests, as soon as you invest on a project and make a public claim about it you have a conflict of interest and cannot be 100% objective.. As simple as that. If someone think that an influencer is going to publish content to make others rich for free and on a totally uninterested manner, he/she should be crazy.

The difference from an ethical point of view is that some influencers LIE to their subscribers. I don't think Ian is one of those tbh, he wanted to get money for his work and made his ICO Ratings a paid service.
He has certainly other faults, personally I think that speaking openly about the tokens one has on his wallets it's a horrible idea and doing rap videos is not really related with crypto.

Said that, I appreciate Ian Balina because he does a great job and brought investment techniques to the ICO sector that are helping to create a more secure space.

I was ALSO frustrated when he made his spreadsheet private, but that is not a reason to throw the amount of hate I've seen on the social media. What I did, instead of blaming him, is to create my own spreadsheet and keep doing my DD.

Take Care :)