Quick Verdict: Is Options with Ryan a Scam?
In my opinion, yes — Options with Ryan is not someone retail traders should trust with their money. Ryan Hildreth was a named defendant in a federal class-action lawsuit over BitConnect, one of the largest cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes in history. After that, he ran a YouTube automation course business until his ~600,000-subscriber channel was deleted by YouTube. He has now reinvented himself a third time as an "options trading expert."
In my opinion, the pattern matters. Beyond the history, my analysis of his trading videos suggests he misrepresents his account performance — showing account-value growth that appears to come from cash deposits rather than trading profits — while charging $3,000 or more for a Discord and course teaching the wheel strategy, which is freely available everywhere. This review lays out the documented evidence so you can decide for yourself.
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Key Takeaways
- Ryan Hildreth was a named defendant in Wildes et al. v. BitConnect International PLC et al. (U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, Case 9:18-cv-80086-DMM), a class action over a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that promised up to 40% monthly returns and collapsed roughly 90%
- After BitConnect, he sold YouTube automation courses; his main channel (reportedly ~600,000 subscribers) was deleted by YouTube for violating platform guidelines
- Critic Scott Shafer documented Hildreth allegedly paying for video views through a microtask website — a direct violation of YouTube's Terms of Service
- In my opinion, his options trading videos misrepresent performance — showing account-value increases that appear to come from cash deposits, not trading gains, while individual positions show losses
- His pricing is deliberately opaque — there is no public price; prospects must "book a call," and members report being quoted $3,000–$5,000+ with no trial
- His core strategy — the wheel strategy on speculative names like SoFi, Robinhood, and Hims — caps upside, concentrates risk, and performs poorly in bear markets
- Everything he teaches is available for free on YouTube and elsewhere
- This is not investment advice. The court filing is public record; the performance and strategy assessments are my opinion based on his public videos
Ryan Hildreth: 2026 Status Update
As of 2026, Ryan Hildreth continues to operate "Options with Ryan" and a paid program he markets as Options Trading University. His current YouTube channel has grown to roughly 100,000 subscribers, posting frequent wheel-strategy and LEAPS tutorials built around speculative growth stocks.
Recent developments worth noting:
- His sales funnel remains a "book a call" model with no public pricing anywhere on his website
- Reddit threads from late 2025 and early 2026 show prospective customers repeatedly asking what his program costs — and being unable to find out without submitting personal information first
- Members in those threads estimate his community has grown to roughly 700 paying members at $3,000+ each, which would imply annual revenue around $2 million from the program alone
- Critics continue to document what they describe as misrepresented account performance in his trading videos
Watch the Full Investigation
Independent investigator Scott Shafer has published multiple videos documenting Hildreth's history across BitConnect, YouTube automation, and his current options business. A separate critique video analyzes his "$12,000 per month wheel strategy" SoFi tutorial and the apparent account-balance manipulation in it. I encourage you to watch the evidence yourself and reach your own conclusion.
8 Reasons Why Options with Ryan May Not Be Legitimate
1) He Was a Named Defendant in the BitConnect Ponzi Lawsuit
This is the single most important fact in this review, and it is not opinion — it is public court record.
In January 2018, a class-action complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida: Wildes et al. v. BitConnect International PLC et al., Case 9:18-cv-80086-DMM. Ryan Hildreth is named as an individual defendant in that complaint, alongside BitConnect's corporate entities and other prominent promoters.
BitConnect, according to the complaint, operated a multi-level cryptocurrency scheme that promised investors returns of up to 40% per month plus roughly 1% compounding daily — regardless of market performance. When BitConnect shut down its lending platform in January 2018, investors' holdings — once carrying a market cap above $2.5 billion — collapsed by roughly 90%.
The complaint describes BitConnect as a Ponzi scheme and characterizes its promoters as an "army of social media mercenaries who were paid to bring more unsuspecting victims into the fraud."
The complaint alleges Hildreth "served as an affiliate/recruiter for BITCONNECT, soliciting hundreds if not thousands of BITCONNECT investors in the United States and abroad through social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook."
In my opinion, anyone deciding whether to hand thousands of dollars to a financial educator should know this history first.
It is documented, it is public, and it is verifiable.
2) After BitConnect, He Pivoted to YouTube Automation — Until YouTube Deleted His Channel
When BitConnect collapsed, Hildreth's YouTube following collapsed with it. Rather than exit the "guru" business, he rebranded as a YouTube automation expert, selling a course (marketed as "Cashflow Channels") that promised people could earn a passive income by outsourcing content creation to overseas contractors for a few dollars per video.
According to Scott Shafer's investigation, Hildreth's main channel — which had grown to a reported ~600,000 subscribers — was ultimately deleted by YouTube.
Hildreth's own explanation, in a video titled "Ryan Hildreth Exposed," was that YouTube cited a vague "policy" violation he didn't agree with.
Shafer's assessment is blunter: the channel was deleted because it was a low-effort content mill — AI-voiced videos pumped out daily, often built on other people's repurposed content — designed to funnel viewers into a paid course. In my opinion, the relevant point for a prospective options student is simple: a man who sold a course teaching people how to succeed on YouTube had his own largest channel removed by YouTube for breaking the rules.
3) He Allegedly Paid for Views — A YouTube Terms of Service Violation
In one investigation, Scott Shafer documented what he describes as evidence that Hildreth used a microtask website (Microworkers.com) to pay people pennies to watch his videos.
Paying for views, likes, subscribers, or comments is a direct violation of YouTube's Terms of Service. In my opinion, two things follow from this. First, it is dishonest — it manufactures the appearance of organic popularity. Second, it is revealing: if his content were as valuable as he claims, he wouldn't need to buy an audience for it.
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4) His Trading Videos Appear to Misrepresent His Performance
This is the reason that should concern current and prospective options students the most.
In a widely discussed critique of Hildreth's "$12,000 per month wheel strategy on SoFi" video, the reviewer noticed something that didn't add up. Hildreth displayed a roughly $735,000 portfolio and claimed it was up about $53,000 over three months — yet, in the same video, almost every single individual position visible in his account was showing a loss (one position down 8%, another down 11%, others down 29%, 31%, and more).
It is not mathematically possible to show an 8% account gain when every position you hold is red — unless money is being added to the account from outside. The reviewer's conclusion, which I share as my opinion: the account-value increase appears to come from cash deposits — potentially from subscriber or membership revenue — not from trading profits.
Multiple independent observers have made the same observation. One commenter who says they use the same brokerage (Charles Schwab) wrote that Hildreth's displayed graph "purposely cuts off the right side which shows the various high and low balance for the period selected," hiding large swings, and that he has presented account screenshots "over 2 weeks old" as if they were current. Another commenter alleges Hildreth "is withdrawing and then depositing money into his account" to make the balance appear to grow.
Beyond the account-balance manipulation evidence, in another widely viewed Options with Ryan video, a paying customer publicly told Ryan that he had lost money following Ryan's recommendations. Rather than acknowledge the loss or offer to help, Ryan's response made a sweeping performance claim that, in my opinion, no honest financial educator should make: "I haven't lost a dime this year. All my clients up huge!" — without offering any verified statements to support either claim.
In my opinion, this exchange is symptomatic. A trader with a real, verified track record would not need to publicly dismiss losing customers as "not doing it right" or make sweeping unverifiable claims that "all my clients up huge." They would simply publish their brokerage statements.
The other, perhaps more troubling, takeaways from Ryan Hildreth's comment is that in this specific video, entitled "3 Stocks to BUY NOW May 2025 (I have $268k Worth) - Options with Ryan" - he claims to have not "lost a dime this year", yet if you zoom in on his positions, many of his individual positions are showing large losses.
The other problem with Ryan's comment is that he claims "All my clients up huge!". If he were ever to face litigation (again), these types of statements can be very damaging.
In my opinion, showing account-value growth that comes from deposits rather than trades — while teaching a paid course built on that supposed performance — is the single most damaging thing a trading educator can do. A trader's only real credential is a verifiable, deposit-adjusted track record. Hildreth has not published one.
5) His Pricing Is Deliberately Opaque
Look at Hildreth's website and you will not find a price. Every path leads to the same place: a blue button asking you to "book a call" with his team.
This is by design. As one investigator put it, gurus use the "book a call" funnel so that people like reviewers can't immediately pull up the price and publish it — and so a salesperson can quote a number based on how much money the prospect says they have to invest.
On Reddit, prospective customers repeatedly ask what the program costs. The answers from members and ex-members converge on $3,000 to $5,000+, with reports that the price depends on the sales call and that customers are pushed toward a full-year commitment with no trial. One member's math: roughly 700 members at $3,000 each implies about $2 million per year in program revenue.
In my opinion, transparent businesses post their prices. When a business hides the price until a salesperson can size you up, that tells you the price is set by what they think they can extract — not by the value of the product.
Members who have paid for the program have publicly confirmed both the pricing band and the post-purchase pattern. One paying customer who paid $4,000 reports they never received the coaching call that was promised, that Ryan's course material "just repeats everything you hear on YouTube," that Ryan's Zoom calls had only about 4 attendees, and that Ryan is now upselling that same customer base on a "MASTER CLASS" for additional fees — effectively selling them again on the one-on-one coaching they thought they had already paid for:
In my opinion, this is the textbook high-ticket coaching pattern: charge thousands for a base program, fail to deliver the promised one-on-one component, and then upsell the customer base on a more expensive "premium" tier promising the same thing they were originally sold.
6) The Strategy Is Simple, Speculative, and Free Everywhere Else
Hildreth's core strategy is the wheel strategy — selling cash-secured puts, taking assignment, then selling covered calls — plus some LEAPS buying. The wheel is one of the most basic, most-taught options strategies on the internet. There is nothing proprietary about it. You can learn it free, in depth, from countless YouTube channels.
Worse, in my opinion, is what he runs it on. His videos feature the wheel on speculative, high-beta names — SoFi, Robinhood, Hims, and similar. Running the wheel on volatile speculative stocks has two structural problems:
- It caps your upside. Selling covered calls on a stock that doubles means watching your shares get called away near the bottom of the move
- It concentrates idiosyncratic risk. One reviewer noted that to generate Hildreth's promised $12,000/month, a cash-secured account would need roughly $170,000–$380,000 all concentrated in a single speculative name like SoFi — which is not a realistic or prudent allocation
When those speculative names decline — and high-beta names always eventually do — wheel traders end up holding a concentrated pile of depreciating stock. As one Reddit commenter put it, the strategy works "when the fad stocks are steady or hot," but when they crash "you own a huge concentrated pile" you have to figure out how to escape.
7) Accusations of Copying Invest with Henry
Henry Moldavskiy of Invest with Henry — himself someone I've reviewed critically — has publicly stated that Hildreth took his bootcamp, learned options from him, and then began "taking my ideas and presenting them in the same way as me" with titles and thumbnails designed to mirror his.
I have no horse in a dispute between two people I both view skeptically. But the relevant point for you is this: by one competitor's account, Hildreth learned options last year and, in that account, "from my experience was pretty newbie." A man who reportedly learned the basics of options roughly a year ago is now charging $3,000+ to teach them.
8) Predatory, High-Pressure Sales Tactics
Consistent with the "book a call" funnel, Hildreth's sales process relies on high-pressure tactics — aggressive upselling, emotional appeals, personal-story persuasion, and pushing prospects toward expensive annual commitments on the call.
If you believe you've been the target of predatory sales tactics or misrepresentation, you have options — see the Consumer Resources section below.
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Ryan Hildreth Net Worth: The Real Business Model
In my opinion, Ryan Hildreth's net worth — which I'd estimate to be around $5 million — comes overwhelmingly from selling courses, not from trading or from the businesses he has promoted.
Consider the sequence. He earned affiliate income promoting BitConnect, a scheme that wiped out investors. He earned course revenue selling YouTube automation, a model his own deleted channel demonstrates didn't sustainably work. And he now earns an estimated ~$2 million per year selling an options program built around a free strategy and, in my opinion, a misrepresented track record.
The through-line across all three ventures is the same: the money is made selling the dream to other people, not by doing the thing he claims to teach. That is the defining characteristic of the guru business model, and in my opinion Hildreth is a textbook example of it.
A Better Way: The "Financed Bull" Strategy
If you want to learn options trading from someone with a verified, deposit-adjusted track record, here's how my approach differs.
Factor | Options with Ryan | BestStockStrategy (David Jaffee) |
|---|---|---|
Verified track record | No published, deposit-adjusted statements | Real E*TRADE statements published at /results/, including underperforming years |
Pricing transparency | No public price; "book a call" funnel; reported $3,000–$5,000+ | Pricing published openly: $279 14-day trial, $1,250 three-month plan |
Trial available | No trial reported; pushed to annual commitment | 14-day trial |
Core strategy | Wheel on speculative high-beta names (SoFi, HOOD, HIMS) | "Financed Bull" — call debit spreads financed by put premium, on large-cap quality |
Risk management | Concentrated single-name risk; caps upside via covered calls | Defined-risk spreads, hedging, position sizing, large-cap focus |
Background | Named in BitConnect Ponzi lawsuit; deleted YouTube automation channel | Ivy League graduate, former Wall Street investment banker |
The Financed Bull doesn't cap your upside the way a covered call on a speculative stock does, and it doesn't concentrate your account into one volatile name. You can read the full breakdown in my guide to the most successful options trading strategies, and you can verify my actual returns — including the years I underperformed — on my results page.
Conclusion: My Options with Ryan Review
In my opinion, Options with Ryan is a pass — and the reasons are documented, not speculative.
Ryan Hildreth was named in a federal lawsuit over the BitConnect Ponzi scheme. He then sold YouTube automation courses until YouTube deleted his largest channel. He has been documented allegedly paying for views in violation of YouTube's rules. His options trading videos, in my opinion and the opinion of multiple independent observers, misrepresent his performance by showing account growth that appears to come from deposits rather than trades. His pricing is deliberately hidden behind a "book a call" funnel and reportedly runs $3,000–$5,000+. And the strategy he charges that much for — the wheel on speculative stocks — is both freely available and, in my opinion, structurally flawed.
He is not the worst educator I've reviewed — that distinction belongs to Invest with Corey and Felix Prehn of GOAT Academy.
But "not the worst" is not a recommendation. In my opinion, Ryan Hildreth has spent close to a decade moving from one monetized reinvention to the next, and the options-trading version is just the most recent. You can learn the wheel strategy for free, and you can find educators with verifiable track records. There is no reason to pay thousands of dollars for this one.
Consumer Resources & Protection
If you believe you've been misled by a trading educator or are the victim of deceptive marketing, these resources can help:
- Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — report fraud and deceptive business practices: reportfraud.ftc.gov
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — submit a tip or complaint about investment fraud: sec.gov/submit-tip-or-complaint
- Your State Attorney General — find your state's consumer protection office: naag.org/find-my-ag
- Better Business Bureau (BBB) — file a complaint against a business: bbb.org/file-a-complaint
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — for financial product and service complaints: consumerfinance.gov/complaint
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is Options with Ryan's real name?
Options with Ryan is run by Ryan Hildreth, an individual based in California. He has previously operated under various business names across cryptocurrency promotion, YouTube automation ("Cashflow Channels"), and now options trading education ("Options Trading University").
Was Ryan Hildreth involved in BitConnect?
Yes. Ryan Hildreth was named as an individual defendant in Wildes et al. v. BitConnect International PLC et al. (U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, Case 9:18-cv-80086-DMM), a class-action complaint that described BitConnect as a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme. The complaint alleges he served as an affiliate/recruiter who solicited investors through social media.
How much does Options with Ryan cost?
Ryan Hildreth does not publish a price. His website directs prospects to "book a call" with his sales team. Based on reports from members and prospective customers on Reddit, the program reportedly costs between $3,000 and $5,000, with the specific quote apparently depending on the sales call. Multiple users report there is no trial and that customers are encouraged to commit to a full year.
What is Ryan Hildreth's net worth?
I estimate Ryan Hildreth's net worth to be around $5 million dollars. In my opinion, the overwhelming majority of it comes from selling courses — across crypto promotion, YouTube automation, and now options trading — rather than from trading profits or from the ventures he has promoted.
Is Options with Ryan a scam?
I can't make that determination for you legally. What I can say: he was named in a Ponzi-scheme lawsuit, his largest YouTube channel was deleted for rule violations, he's been documented allegedly paying for views, and in my opinion his trading videos misrepresent his performance. Based on that documented record, my opinion is that Options with Ryan is not trustworthy and not worth the money.
Does Ryan Hildreth have a verified trading track record?
No. Ryan Hildreth has not published verified, deposit-adjusted brokerage statements. In my opinion, his trading videos actually show the opposite of a verified track record — account-value growth that appears to come from cash deposits while individual positions show losses.
Who taught Options with Ryan how to trade?
By the public account of Henry Moldavskiy (Invest with Henry), Ryan Hildreth took his options bootcamp and learned the basics from him before launching a competing program. By that account, Hildreth was a relative beginner at options as recently as a year before launching his own paid program.
Is the wheel strategy that Ryan teaches worth paying for?
In my opinion, no. The wheel strategy is one of the most basic options strategies and is taught for free, in depth, across YouTube and elsewhere. There is nothing proprietary about it. Paying $3,000+ to learn a free strategy — particularly one run on speculative, high-beta stocks — is not a good use of capital.
Will Options with Ryan's strategy work in a bear market?
In my opinion, it will struggle badly. Running the wheel on speculative high-beta names caps your upside in good times and leaves you holding concentrated, depreciating stock in bad times. The strategy tends to look good while speculative stocks are rising and to perform poorly when they fall.
How is BestStockStrategy different?
I publish my real E*TRADE brokerage statements — including the years I underperformed — on my results page. My pricing is public ($279 for a 14-day trial). I teach the "Financed Bull" strategy on large-cap quality names rather than the wheel on speculative stocks. And I have 127+ verified third-party five-star reviews. You can evaluate all of it before spending a dollar.
Disclaimer
This article reflects my personal opinion and analysis, along with publicly available court records and the publicly published investigations of third parties. The BitConnect class-action complaint (Case 9:18-cv-80086-DMM) is a matter of public record; the filing of a complaint contains allegations and is not a finding of liability. Statements regarding account misrepresentation, strategy quality, and net worth are my opinion based on publicly available videos and information. Nothing in this article is investment advice, legal advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. I am not a registered investment advisor. Always do your own research and consult a qualified professional before making financial decisions.