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.
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.
