Bankless hosts slammed for dumping tokens

Bankless hosts Ryan Sean Adams, David Hoffman, and ejaaz on a video stream also containing the Bankless logo and a sponsorship logo for MantleBankless hosts Ryan Sean Adams, David Hoffman, and ejaaz (clockwise from top left) (attribution)
The hosts of the Bankless crypto podcast have landed in hot water after selling off some of the substantial quantities of $AICC tokens they were allocated as investors in the project. The $AICC project was launched by ejaaz, a co-host on an affiliated Bankless podcast, and had been promoted on Bankless shows. Each co-host received 9 million $AICC tokens in exchange for their 5 SOL (~$950) investments. The brand's venture capital arm, Bankless VC, also invested 2 SOL (~$380) and received a 3.64 million token allocation.

Shortly after the token's public launch, Bankless VC dumped 300,000 AICC (8% of their allocation) for 344 SOL ($65,300). By immediately dumping tokens on retail when the token opened for public trading, they were able to sell the tokens for an average of $0.22 — considerably higher than the $0.05 to $0.11 the token has been trading at over the last 24 hours.

When questioned about the trades, Bankless host David Hoffmann wrote: "Agree that Bankless Ventures should not be selling tokens - that was an impulsive mistake." He announced that they had repurchased the tokens they had sold, and were "discussing a self-imposed vesting schedule" for selling tokens that they themselves had promoted.

They later posted a long apology in their Discord, blaming the sales on Ben Lakoff, a general partner of Bankless VC. "Ben did not have context for this, and was in the mindset of trading a local high as you might trade a meme coin you're bullish on - or there's no way he would have done this - huge mistake, first time something like this has happened - he's devastated", explained Bankless co-host Ryan Sean Adams. He also placed some blame on AICC for not imposing any token lockups or vesting schedule that would prohibit early investors from dumping tokens on retail.