What’s going on everybody—Drew Creel here. This video’s a little different from my normal metal guitar lesson/gear deep dive stuff, because I’m breaking down how my YouTube channel got hacked on February 8th, 2026 and turned into a crypto scam livestream machine. It started with what looked like a legit Skillshare sponsorship email. They pushed me to sign documents through PandaDoc, and the second I clicked the link, they basically stole my login token (at least that’s my understanding) and locked me out of my Gmail and the YouTube account tied to it. Within hours they were streaming “Bitcoin conference” videos with QR codes, trying to get people to send crypto with the promise of doubling it. The scariest part wasn’t just the channel—it was realizing how much of my entire online life is connected to one Google login: PayPal, banking, Zoom for interviews, Spotify/SoundCloud, social accounts, all of it. I reached out to TeamYouTube on Twitter, filed a case, and after about 2–3 days I got the channel back. My big takeaway: creators need multi-layer security (2-step verification, backup recovery options, spam filtering, and ideally a hardware key like a Google Titan key), because these scammers are looking for quick wins—and smaller/mid-sized creators can be easy targets.