Bankless co-founder David Hoffman sold Ether, absorbed a wave of public criticism for the move, and then put the capital into LIT and ZEC, positions that later gained as much as 369%. The account came from WuBlockchain in a September 7, 2026 post, which laid out the sequence from the initial sale through the rotation into the two smaller assets.
The story landed with an audience that pays attention to Hoffman specifically because Bankless has spent years as one of the loudest Ethereum-aligned media brands. A co-founder trimming ETH is not a routine trade to that crowd. It reads as a signal, whether or not it was meant as one.
The trade that drew the backlash
Selling Ether while running an Ethereum-focused media platform invites scrutiny by default. Followers who hold the same asset tend to treat a prominent figure's exit as a verdict on the asset itself, even when the seller frames it as portfolio management. Hoffman took that criticism in the open, which is part of why the sequence became a talking point rather than a quiet reallocation.
For context on price levels, ETH traded at $2,487 as of September 7, 2026, down 0.3% on the day, according to CoinMarketCap market data. The broader tape was soft the same morning, with Bitcoin at $79,364, down 0.6%, and the Fear and Greed Index reading 73, or Greed. A single insider's sale does not move a large-cap asset like Ether, so the reaction was about perception and reputation more than order-book impact.
LIT and ZEC did the heavy lifting
The payoff came from where the capital went next. WuBlockchain reports the rotation into LIT and ZEC produced gains up to 369%. That figure sits at the top of the range, so it likely reflects the best-performing leg rather than the blended return across both positions. The post did not break out an entry price, exit price, or position size, which means the exact realized profit is not something the source establishes.
Zcash (ZEC) is a privacy-focused asset with a long history in the market. Treating a percentage move on a smaller-cap name as comparable to a move in Ether ignores the volatility gap. Assets further down the market-cap curve swing harder in both directions, and a 369% run is the kind of number that comes with a matching drawdown risk if the timing is wrong. The upside and the danger are the same coin.
Timing versus conviction
The episode reopens an old argument in crypto: whether returns come from calling the right moment or from holding through the noise. Hoffman's rotation, as reported, is a timing win. He moved out of a large-cap, into two higher-beta names, and caught a strong run. That is a different discipline from the buy-and-hold conviction Bankless has often championed for Ethereum.
Both approaches carry survivorship bias when told after the fact. A rotation that pays 369% gets a headline. The same structure that loses 60% usually does not get posted at all. The takeaway is not that rotation beats holding, but that the two are separate strategies with separate risk profiles, and mixing the reputational message of one with the trading behavior of the other is what generated the controversy here.
For anyone spending or saving in crypto rather than trading it, the practical lesson sits closer to home. Concentrated bets on smaller assets can fund outsized gains or vaporize a balance, which is why many people who actually transact keep spending capital in stablecoin balances and reserve volatile positions for money they can afford to lose. The same volatility that produced 369% is the reason a crypto card funded directly from a token like ZEC carries top-up timing risk that a stablecoin-funded card does not.
Overview
WuBlockchain reports that Bankless co-founder David Hoffman sold Ether, drew public criticism, and rotated the proceeds into LIT and ZEC for gains of up to 369%. The source establishes the sequence and the headline return but not the position sizes or the blended profit. ETH itself was little changed on the day at $2,487 as of September 7, 2026, so the story is about a prominent figure's positioning and the timing-versus-conviction debate it reignited, not a market-moving event. Treat the 369% figure as the top of the range and as an after-the-fact single data point, not a strategy to copy.
