David Hoffman is the Co-founder and host of Bankless, a cryptocurrency media brand and community that focuses on educating and empowering individuals to navigate the decentralized financial landscape. ^[1][2][3]

Education

Hoffman attended Chapman University from 2011 to 2015 for a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Fine Arts. ^[1]

Career

David Hoffman began his career in 2018 as a Blockchain Researcher at New Alchemy and Bunker Capital. Afterward, he served as the Chief of Operations at RealT, a platform for tokenizing real estate and making it publicly available across the internet until 2020. ^[1]

Bankless Media

David founded Bankless alongside Ryan Sean Adams in September 2020. Bankless is a cryptocurrency media brand and community that educates and empowers individuals to navigate the decentralized financial landscape. ^[4]

On how he got started with crypto, Hoffman responded:

"I knew Bitcoin existed, but I didn't really deeply discover crypto until 2017. So there was no nagging. There was like the moment that I discovered what the hell this thing was and there was almost no looking back. There was a three-to-four-month period where I went down the crypto rabbit hole and before I realized that I am not doing anything else with my life as a cognitive choice" ^[5]

David focuses on writing fundamental investment theses for Ether and Ethereum, while also making deep connections to impacting culture and the psyche of those who adopt a crypto lifestyle. David holds 99% of his wealth outside of Banks and inside of Ethereum and is focused on leading the way for others to do the same. ^[2]

On how he started Bankless, Hoffman described:

"Bankless was actually my second podcast. POV Crypto came first and POV Crypto was me and an old college friend who was a big Bitcoiner and I was Ethereum. And so throughout the bear market, it was actually like one of the hotter podcasts throughout, throughout the 2018 bear market. And we were just having debates, friendly debates because we went to college, we could yell at each other and still be friends. So that was nice.

Over time I was getting closer and closer to Ryan [Sean Adams,, the Bankless founder]. Just because we figured out that we actually had just shared a lot of ideas started engaging with each other on Twitter engaging with each other, more sharing DMs.
He would read my articles. I would read his articles at some point in time we just hopped into a zoom and tried it for an hour. Then he started, the Bankless newsletter.

And at some point in time, like maybe the third or fourth time I DMed him, I was like, all right, Ryan, we'll do the Bankless podcast. You just show up, I'll edit and get it out. And that's what hooked him not having to do all of the lifting." ^[5]

Bankless Ventures

On April 28, 2023, the Bankless team announced the launch of Bankless Ventures, an early-stage venture fund of which Hoffman serves as its General Partner. ^[7][8]

"The relationships we’ve (Hoffman & Adams) built through the podcast have helped us meet more and more pioneers with a shared vision for crypto’s ultimate potential. Through our angel investments, Ryan and I have helped finance small teams that eventually grew to become pillars of the crypto industry.

We’ve been fortunate that the growing network of Bankless has given us access to a substantial amount of dealflow, and it’s become much more than two individuals can handle." - the team said in a blogpost^[7]

In May 2023, Bankless Venture reportedly raised a $35 million venture capital fund to invest in seed-stage Web3 companies. The fund is a separate legal entity from the Bankless podcast but shares its brand. One venture capital source told CoinDesk the platform and investing arm combo would mean “incredible deal flow” for the nascent VC. ^[9]

The Bankless Ventures team includes the hosts, Ryan Sean Adams & David Hoffman, Ben Lakoff, Kimberly Adams, and Brent Matterson. Advisors of the venture fund include Justin Drake and Anthony Sassano. ^[7][8]