David Hoffman, co-founder of Bankless, revealed how capital will be redeployed after the ETH sale, unveiling a new wallet tilted towards VVV, NEAR, ZEC, HYPE, and LIT. The move represents a notable shift for one of Ethereum’s most famous advocates and has sparked debate over whether Hoffman is pivoting to a new long-term thesis or chasing a different segment of the market.
In a mail At The other half was postponed because the dollar’s cost averaging into an asset had not already risen sharply, he said.
“I left the rest as capital for DCA to something that didn’t really reach multiples,” Hoffman wrote, adding that NEAR was an exception because it was “about 1.40 at the time.” Then he said he completed that second phase of the rotation: “I’m done buying LIT with the remaining 50%.”
Why Hoffman chose LIT as the next major bet on cryptocurrencies
The revelation quickly turned into a broader discussion of Hoffman’s investment thesis on LIT and Lighter, especially after Multi-currency capitals company’s Kyle Samani asked why a user would choose Lighter instead of Robinhood. Hoffman framed the answer around product specialization, market structure, and auditability rather than mere token speculation.
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“The easy answer is that Robinhood “Lighter is a platform for everything, and Lighter is highly optimized specifically for criminals,” Hoffman wrote. “Lighter has more assets, including more pre-IPO markets. Lighter does not require a KYC subscription, and Robinhood Perps is only intended for a closed group of users in the EU.
He acknowledged an important limitation: “By contrast, Lighter is a VPN that is blocked in the US.” But the deeper distinction is transparency, Hoffman said. He pointed to zkLighter, Lighter’s zero-knowledge system, which he said allows end users to verify enforcement of exchange rules without authorization.
“zkLighter is fully auditable by end users, so anyone can verify without permission that the exchange is following its own rules,” he wrote. “Order matching, funding, risk checking, filtering, etc. are defined in zk circuits, so Ethereum verifies that Lighter rules are followed before accepting status updates. Bullish crypto spirit!”
For Hoffman, the claim to auditability is not just a technical brand. It goes directly to the confidence of traders and market makers, because participants can verify that “there is no privileged party trading against users,” he said, citing the collapse of FTX and Alameda as a relevant failure mode.
Hoffman also emphasized the cost of latency and execution. He claimed that Lighter had the “best response time of any PERP exchange” and the “best fee structure,” while pointing to third-party comparisons with Hyperliquid. However, regarding Robinhood, he was more circumspect, saying he couldn’t judge Robinhood’s perpetrators directly because he couldn’t reach them and wouldn’t be able to audit them in the same way.
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“Maybe Robinhood, when crimes eventually come out, will have a no-fee structure as well,” he wrote. “But that means a draw between RH and Lighter, not a win for RH.”
The discussion also revealed opposition from parts of the Ethereum community. One user accused Hoffman of moving “from ethics to the other extreme,” while another suggested he had become a short-term trader. Hoffman rejected both characterizations.
“The technology in all these assets is also interesting,” he responded to one critic. Hoffman responded to another who joked about having an investment thesis and sticking to it: “My last investment thesis was eight years ago. God forbid I get a new one!”
When asked directly about LIT versus HYPE, Hoffman said he views the situation as a “beta and alpha” for HYPE. His reasons centered on relative repurchases, product quality, and regulatory status, noting that “repurchases in LIT” move “twice as fast as relative HYPE buybacks“, along with what he described as a technically superior product, better graphics, stronger latency, and being based in the US.
At the time of writing, LIT was trading at $1.50.
Featured image created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
