ShapeShift’s Voorhees Defends Venice Token Terms After Critics Call Deal Underpriced

Erik Voorhees defended the token terms behind Venice’s $65 million Series A on Thursday, telling critics on X that investors could ultimately pay $131 million for 6.5 million locked VVV tokens if they exercise an attached option. The founder pushed back a day after announcing the round at a $1 billion equity valuation.

Series A backers received a vesting grant of 1.5 million VVV plus an option to buy 5 million more, all locked for four years, according to Voorhees’ original thread. Exercising the option would cost investors an additional $66.5 million, bringing potential total proceeds to roughly $131 million, a figure Voorhees reiterated in a reply to a critic who argued the structure undervalued the tokens.

Napkin Math

The critic had suggested Venice could have raised the same $65 million by selling 8.1 million tokens at around $8 each rather than locking up equity and token warrants. Voorhees rejected that framing, writing on X that “we would never offer such a thing,” and that the actual deal nets Venice up to $131 million for 6.5 million tokens if fully exercised, not $65 million for roughly 8 million.

He argued the OTC buyers are taking on illiquidity risk that no existing VVV holder carries, since both their equity and token allocations remain locked while the token trades openly on exchanges. VVV was changing hands around $13.48 on Thursday, down 1.2% over the previous 24 hours, while BTC gained 2.5%, according to CoinGecko.

Locked Up Twice

In a separate reply, Voorhees clarified that the 5 million optioned tokens are not sold until investors actually exercise and pay Venice the $66.5 million, at which point the shares vest over four years. “So if they exercise and pay Venice then yes they will have been sold,” he wrote, addressing a separate question about whether the option counts as a completed sale.

The Series A, announced Wednesday with Dragonfly leading, marked Venice’s first outside capital since the AI platform launched in May 2025. Voorhees said the company, which he also founded after leaving crypto exchange ShapeShift, hit profitability in the first quarter and holds more than 30 million of the roughly 80 million VVV tokens in circulation.

Any VVV granted or optioned to Series A investors stays locked for a year before unlocking linearly over three additional years, meaning the earliest tokens would not reach the market until roughly two years after Venice’s token launch. Voorhees has framed the sequencing, selling equity and token warrants after 18 months of open VVV trading, as the reverse of the pre-sale model used by most crypto projects.